Retired Police Detective Howard Wooldridge says that the Drug War “is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow”.
Well guess who else is saying it?
Today in his State of the State address, Governor Cuomo made a passionate call for reforming New York’s marijuana possession laws in order to reduce unlawful, biased, and costly arrests. The governor noted the discrepancy in the law between public and private possession of small amounts of marijuana, and proposed standardizing penalties for possession.
In his prepared written statement, the governor referenced the original intent of the marijuana possession law from 1977: “The legislature finds that arrests, criminal prosecutions, and criminal penalties are inappropriate for people who possess small quantities of marihuana for personal use. Every year, this process needlessly scars thousands of lives and wastes millions of dollars in law enforcement resources, while detracting from the prosecution of serious crime.”
Today, marijuana possession is the number one arrest in New York City. The governor cited the harmful outcomes of these arrests – racial disparities, stigma, fiscal waste, criminalization – and called on the legislature to act: ”It’s not fair, it’s not right. It must end, and it must end now.”
The article goes on to further state:
The need for reform is abundantly clear: In the last 15 years, over 600,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession, mostly in New York City. More than 50,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in the City in 2011 alone, far exceeding the total marijuana arrests from 1981-1995. Most of those arrested, nearly 85%, are Black and Latino, mostly young men – despite federal government data on drug use showing that whites use marijuana at higher rates. The costs of these arrests to taxpayers is at least $75 million a year. Last year, the New York City Council passed a resolution calling on Albany to act. Governor Cuomo’s proposal would end tens of thousands of racially biased and unlawful marijuana possession.
And to cap this post off, how about a video made by Detective Wooldridge?
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[…] Surreal as it may seem, thanks to M. Simon I have just learned that New York Governor Cuomo — yes, the same Cuomo who wants to destroy what remains of the Second Amendment – wants to liberalize marijuana laws. […]