In the New York State assembly, a bipartisan team of legislators have introduced a bill to reduce the penalties for marijuana possession found in public view. From the Times Union: In a rare show of bipartisanship and upstate-downstate agreement, freshman state Sen. Mark Grisanti is co-sponsoring a bill with Democratic Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries to reduce [...]

New York City has a huge number of low-level marijuana arrests every year and overwhelmingly, the people targeted are African Americans and Latinos. Public radio station WNYC has a great piece out today focused on the problem and shows how many of these arrests were likely based on illegal searches or gross violations of Americans’ [...]

While opposition to marijuana prohibition has risen in recent years; yet under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration New York City has dramatically stepped up its marijuana arrests. The NYPD now spends a huge amount of police time and money arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses. Not surprisingly given the racist ways drug laws have been applied in this [...]