On the Sidewalks of New York is a weekly feature at Human Events wherein Jacqueline Toboroff, a native New Yorker, will share her observations and candid commentary on the goings-on in our nation’s largest city. Wherever you live, and whatever you feel, there is no escaping the fact that New York City matters.
I finished dinner with my kids, hailed a taxi, got in, and then just as the driver started the meter, we got out. The air was dense and stunk of weed. Just the sort of atmosphere in which no mom wants her kids in.
Welcome to New Weed City.
There’s a 44% increase in traffic fatalities during the first three months of 2022 - how many of them are due to driving while stoned? We’ll never really know. The first obstacle our leadership, the face of which is DA Bragg, have put in place is disallowing the NYPD from prosecuting marijuana sales. This is part of the general antipathy of leadership to the rule of law and order.
Why does the administration collaborate with drug dealers?
It’s counterintuitive for government to push a drug that can degrade sexual inhibitions and lead to risky sex that may lead to the transmission of Monkeypox. Of course, the nonbinary appointments of the Biden administration think this is quite normal. As a result, we’ve come to learn, government creates the problem so it can find a “solution.”
"Members of the LGBTQ+ community have always been fierce advocates for their rights, including, and especially, when it comes to receiving timely access to health care," said Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan. This is categorically false. HIV / AIDS was given the unequivocal opposite treatment of COVID. Nothing shut down and no one could mention who had HIV / AIDS because the gay community didn’t want to be stigmatized. Meanwhile, with COVID, violations of HIPAA were rampant; dining out, traveling, going to the museum, Broadway, school, or work required a vaccine passport and a phone number for contact tracing to out everyone in existence.
"As I have said since day one, we are prepared, not panicked and…monkeypox vaccination site[s] [are] one more critical tool to keep New Yorkers healthy," said New York City Mayor Adams. Another “critical tool” might be not to do drugs lowering inhibitions leading to risky sex.
But getting people hooked on drugs is a cash cow. Seemingly, there are more smoke shops than coffee and pilates haunts on any given block in all five boroughs making up New York City. They’re chomping at the bit, ready to spring into action and sell weed as soon as given the green light. Projections for recreational marijuana sales in the Empire State could reach $7 billion once the market is fully established and cannabis companies throughout the United States want a piece of the pie.
Government also wants a piece of the pie. It has found a way to provide “equity” via drugs. Before ousted sexual predator New York Governor Cuomo left office, he said, “Our comprehensive approach to legalizing and regulating the adult-use cannabis market provides the opportunity to generate much-needed revenue, but it also enables us to directly support the communities most impacted by the war on drugs by creating equity and jobs at every level, in every community in our great state.” In addition to the inanity of this statement, he pledged to put $100 million of the revenue generated in the first four years marijuana is legal into a social equity fund and to continue to add $50 million annually to the fund thereafter. What leader of a state would turn it into a marijuana shop?
The government makes money getting people hooked on drugs and has figured out a backdoor form of confiscating your money in the most diabolical of ways–fast-tracking decline.
For the moment, we can smoke weed but we can’t sell it. Presently in New York City, it’s against the law for people younger than 21 years old to possess, sell or use any amount of cannabis. But, really, there are no rules in DA Bragg’s city, and everyone knows it. Walk down any street and you’ll see teenagers milling around or postmen sitting idly, sack of mail by their side, smoking a joint and without fear of punishment. Theoretically, it’s also illegal to possess more than three ounces of cannabis and 24 grams of concentrated cannabis, sell any amount without a license, or drive while under the influence or impaired by cannabis. But again, what’s going to happen?
The Big Apple is known for its robust underground and unregulated cannabis market. One can order drugs anytime, anywhere; dealers show up in expensive cars with all manners of supplies on hand.
Dealing and drugging in public is commonplace, leading to the degradation of life in New York City. When I ran for City Council, District 1 (Lower Manhattan), I wrote an op-ed for the New York Post discussing the hostile takeover of Washington Square Park, which scores a deadly trifecta; it’s dangerous, dirty, and a full-blown drug den. Washington Square Park isn’t an anomaly, it is representative of the big picture; heightened crime, quality of life issues, hygienic deterioration, and mental erosion for many already teetering on the edge in communal spaces.
On March 31st, 2021, New York became the 15th state to legalize cannabis. Medical marijuana was already legal in New York and seemingly everyone has some sort of ailment only reefer can soothe; PTSD, insomnia, anxiety, chronic pain, sleep deprivation, seizures, weight gain, cancer. But pot has some serious side effects. It can distort the sense of time, cause depression and paranoia, damage motor skills, and make driving more dangerous.
Despite the harmful nature of drugs, or perhaps because of it, New York City ordered the NYPD to stop testing cops for marijuana use, according to officials. “I don’t agree with it at all, but I’m an old-time cop,” one police officer with decades on the job said. “I think it sets a bad example. What’s next, shooting heroin?”
Yes, heroin is next. Mayor Adams rolled out a campaign that hit the New York City Subways in May 2022 with photos of youthful people (get 'em hooked young) saying, “Don’t be ashamed you are using, be empowered that you are using safely.” Another ad said, “Fentanyl test strips can help save your life.”
