New in PJ Media:
Decriminalizing marijuana, we’ve been told to the point of stupor for years, would simply be a matter of recognizing the way society has changed and coming to a mature accommodation of a widespread current practice. It would free up valuable police resources to deal with actual crimes and real criminals, and end a longstanding injustice in which — you guessed it! — people of color were, we were told, disproportionately targeted for arrest and prosecution. So the state of New York has legalized marijuana, and how’s it going? Doritos and Patchouli oil sales through the roof? Maybe. But there have been a lot of unexpected downsides.
The New York Post reported last Monday that “the Sunday night murder inside a Harlem ‘smoke shop’ near the corner of 125th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard — the second shooting in the neighborhood in the last year — is a savage reminder of the state’s stupendously disastrous legalization of marijuana.” It seems that the state went about the legalization by “virtually eliminating the entire criminal code pertaining to marijuana overnight.” Making matters even worse, “progressive state lawmakers, besotted by a woke vision of the pursuit of equity, decided to reserve the first retail licenses for felons and other ‘justice-involved’ individuals.” They wanted to make legalized marijuana “a vehicle for reparations.” Great idea!
The state has been slow to grant licenses to legal marijuana shops, however, so illegal ones have proliferated, and cops can do little or nothing to stop them, “because having weed on open display isn’t against the law — the cops have to be present to witness a sale in order to issue a violation.” But these places also often sell other illegal drugs and quickly become centers for other crimes as well. There has been “a sharp rise in robberies targeting illegal smoke shops around the city. There were 251 violent robberies in 2021, and more than double that number in 2022. This year, robberies are up another 10%.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared: “This cannabis stuff is a real problem!” He has, however, done nothing about it and insisted that it’s the state’s problem. Yet the city has plenty of problems of its own that arise from the legalization, and they aren’t all related to crime. Another unexpected byproduct of the proliferation of grass inside Gotham has been that the City That Never Sleeps has become the City That Always Sleeps. The Post’s Steve Cuozzo observed Sunday that all too many city stores are staffed by stoners who can barely understand, much less fulfill, customer orders.
“A license to get high,” Cuozzo says, “has turned service employees into zombies.”
There is more. Read the rest here.
Transmaster says
What is happening is these illegal Pot Shops deal only in cash, so it is a mecca (pun intended) for armed robberies to get that cash loot. Plus these joints are known for selling other pharmaceuticals which are more valuable than the “smok’n dope and are subject to armed robberies.
Keith O says
Funnily enough, we have observed a decline in violent crimes in the court system here from people who smoke weed.
The booze results in domestic violence cases, the ice & other hard drugs results in robberies and other violent crime, up to and including child rape and murder.
Here in Queensland, weed isn’t legal, except for medicinal, but weed smokers don’t do the violence route.
David M says
People doing really bad things in Australia all seem to be on ice. I’ve heard it is cheap too.
Keith O says
Too bloody cheap. And incredibly expensive for the rest of the community.
Don McKellar says
The legalization of dope has ironically created may of the same problems prohibition did! And add some woke anti-logic and Democrat run city beaurocracy to the mix — and you’ve got a crime wave and a downturn in quality of life for everybody.