New York medical marijuana and “decrim fix” bills pass Assembly, but stall in Senate

Two new important bills passed the New York Assembly in 2013: based on the first bill, seriously ill patients can use legally medical marijuana and the second bill says that it will fix the “public view” of New York’s decriminalization law.

In a recent poll it was appeared that the 82% of New York citizens supported the use of medical marijuana. Nevertheless, New York’s medical marijuana patients still wait the official green light by Governor Andrew Cuomo, in order to get their medication safely. Governor Cuomo used to be totally against but he seems to be more positive, although he did not say that he is positive for a reformation like that yet.

The Assembly passed the bill in June 3 by an overwhelming 99=41 vote. This medical marijuana bill was sponsored by Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried.

Lately, the “public view” of New York’s 1977 decriminalization law has been abused quite a lot by police officers. The New York City Police have checked thousands of people, mostly young people of color to show what they have in their pockets and once they found on them marijuana they made them look like they were serious criminals. This will probably change this year thanks to the fact that the Assembly voted on May 29 a bill that would stop the police from acting that way. However the bill, still did not advance to the Senate.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the state’s law to be fixed last year. Unfortunately, Dean Skellos who was the Senate Majority Leader, stopped the progress as he was totally against the “decrim fix” back in June because as he was saying, he believed that if the law passed then people “would walk around with 10 joints in each ear.”

The state of New York is one of the 14 states that penalize the possession of marijuana with a fine instead of possibly send the holder to jail. If the police catch someone with up to 25 grams of marijuana the penalty is 100 dollars, although if the amount that the holder has is somewhere between 25 grams and 2 ounces, then the fine is 500 dollars plus a punishment of being up to three months in jail.

As it was mentioned earlier, the law enforcement will be able to exploit a loophole in the decriminalization law by forcing someone to expose to an “open public view” the total amount of marijuana that he or she carries with. Due to this fact, New York has the second highest per capita arrest rate in the United States, with almost 93000 people to be arrested every year. As it was reported by ACLU, the arrests have been racially disproportionate as black were arrested 4.52 times more than whites for marijuana possession.

The Drug Policy Alliance and other allies have made a campaign to fix this disproportion. In September 11 of 2011, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly issued a memo to police in order to not arrest people for possession that is not in public view, but unfortunately arrests have continued.