NYPD Instructed to Ignore Public Marijuana Use, Not to Search Users’ Cars, Which Often Have Guns

by Yehudit Garmaise

     After Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order that legalized the “recreational use,” sale, and growth of marijuana in the state, many New Yorkers and reporters wondered how the NYPD will now respond to appearance or smell of marijuana use in public.

   The law, which Gov. Cuomo signed on Wednesday, instructs police officer to ignore both New Yorkers who smoke the drug in public and the exchange of marijuana, unless money is involved, the New York Post reported.

   Perhaps most concerning is the law’s prohibition against using marijuana’s strong smell to “establish probable cause of a crime to search a vehicle,” an NYPD memo says.

   According to the new law, police are allowed search cars’ passenger compartments, not their trunks, when drivers appear to have used marijuana in the recent past, or they admit “having smoked recently.”

    “The trunk may not be searched unless the officer develops separate probable cause to believe the trunk contains evidence of a crime (for instance, a gun recovered from under driver seat),” says the NYPD memo, which adds that adults will be able to possess up to three ounces of the drug in public spaces.

   An NYPD source warned that the lenient new law could dramatically decrease public safety.

   “We always say, ‘Drugs equal guns,’” a police officer said. “When you smelled [the drug], you could pull a car over. Now, you can’t pull them over.” 

   “That’s bad, especially with all the gun violence going on.”

   Yesterday at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press conference, when BoroPark24 and another reporter asked the mayor and his top physicians whether they fear any negative health or public safety ramifications to emerge from the legalization of marijuana, the mayor gave lip service to “health and safety issues” for children and others, but he seems much more concerned with “address[ing] the injustices, the mistakes in the criminal justice system.”

  “We recognize we've had widespread marijuana usage for decades,” the mayor said. “It has been only counterproductive to have it be illegal while also being simultaneously widespread.”

    Jay Varma, MD, the mayor’s senior health adviser, also dismissed the risks of the legalization of marijuana when he said, “I tell my children, you know, there are things that adults should do, and there are things that kids should do.

   “And my recommendation is that they stay away from kind of mind-altering substances when they're younger and they wait until they're older.”

Photo by: Unplash