Marijuana Initiative in New York, Governor Cuomo Says the Law is the Problem
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has stated that the problem with marijuana is the law and has offered an alternative solution.
Governor Cuomo has suggested that the current state laws are a problem in regards to fairness and consistency because most arrests are made through the stop-and-frisk program which has a tendency of targeting minorities. The 54-year-old Democrat thus proposed at a news conference on Monday that legislators should decriminalize the possession of marijuana when it weighs under a certain amount.
According to Cuomo, being in possession of less than 25 grams of marijuana should not be a criminal act.
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"This is about creating fairness and consistency in our laws," Cuomo said. "The problem is the law, and the solution is to change the law."
The revision would be an attempt to reduce the number of people detained under the NYPD stop-and-frisk policy. Numbers have revealed that minorities make up the majority of people who are stopped and frisked.
"We hope this would reduce the incentive for NYPD to continue its out-of-control stop-and-frisk campaign," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told Bloomberg. "We will continue to call for major reform until stop-and-frisk is reined in."
At current, 94 percent of marijuana related arrests occurred when the person had less than 25 grams in their possession. Of those 50,000 arrests, 84 percent were also composed of black or Hispanic people according to the governor.
Mayor Bloomberg also backed the initiative in a statement saying that it "strikes the right balance by ensuring that the NYPD will continue to have the tools it needs to maintain public safety -- including making arrests for selling or smoking marijuana," according to Bloomberg.
Some joked that Bloomberg appeared to have a problem with bigger sizes.
"They should use 16 grams as the limit," Lary Katz wrote on the Bloomberg blog. "This way it would be in line with Bloomberg's criminalization of more than 16oz of soda. This way you only have to remember to stay at 16 or less for pot or soda."
