New York City’s full-on weed legalization stinks

What is that smell?

If you’re reading this in New York City, you know the answer. The entire city reeks of weed.

I’m no puritan. I’ve smoked quite a bit of herb in my life.

But even in my early 20s, at the height of my blunt smoking, when I certainly wanted decriminalization, I visited Amsterdam and hoped we wouldn’t do what it had done.

Amsterdam felt dangerous and seedy.

Its laws were supposed to limit stoners to smoking a little weed in coffee shops while sitting on a beanbag under a Bob Marley poster.

Instead I saw open drug use in parks and on the streets to the extent I had never seen in my home of New York City.

Zombies walked around with track marks on their arms.

Europe’s drug addicts had seen an opening in Amsterdam and convened there.

I hoped my city wouldn’t decriminalize pot this way.

No, New York didn’t do that. Instead, it took things a giant step further and legalized marijuana altogether.

New Yorkers I spoke to were surprised. They’d assumed smoking pot had been decriminalized in a similar fashion to Amsterdam.

Surely all the people smoking weed on their streets weren’t doing it legally?

But yes, according to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, “Adults age 21 and older may smoke or vape cannabis in most places where tobacco smoking is permitted.”

You can smoke pretty much anywhere in New York city legally.

Outside your kid’s school? Sure!

Atop the stairs of the subway so everyone catches a whiff on their way to work? Yep.

Now I wish New York had followed Amsterdam’s path!

It smells really bad. Even lifelong stoners tell me the stench in the city is excessive.

There are elements specific to New York that make the problem even worse.

Scaffolding, that New York City blight, encourages smokers.

In these pages last year, Steve Cuozzo reported there were about 9,000 such “sidewalk bridges” in the city, which he said “darken doorfronts, ruin businesses, harbor drug addicts and enable crime.” 

They’ve also become prime locations for smoking weed.

Whether it’s raining or you need a bit of shade, the scaffolding provides the toker just the right atmosphere. Who needs a beanbag or Marley poster?

Families who live upstairs from scaffolding have told me their children’s rooms constantly smell like marijuana.

They’ve tried asking the smokers to move it along but, hey, it’s legal, and they can do whatever they want, man.

Hilariously, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene notes we should: “Avoid smoking cannabis rolled or mixed with tobacco. There is no safe amount of tobacco use or of secondhand tobacco smoke exposure for those around you.”

No amount of secondhand-tobacco exposure is safe, but somehow all the secondhand exposure of marijuana smoke is totally fine.

“Cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke,” per an article published by NORML, an established pro-marijuana-legalization group.

Along with legalizing marijuana, New York is looking the other way at the 1,500+ illegal smoke shops that have sprouted everywhere.

Yes, most of the shops you see around the city selling “sour diesel” or “strawberry haze” are doing it illegally.

And we haven’t even considered what so many stoned people walking around will do to the fabric of the city.

This full-on legalization is a great example of how the left simply takes things too far.

Most people want reasonable legislation around various issues.

The blue areas just take the craziest position and ram it through friendly legislatures that want to prove their progressive cred.

I wrote in these pages in 2012 that New Yorkers should be allowed to have a drink in public.

Why should enjoying a glass of wine in the park or a beer on your stoop garner you a ticket? We weren’t bothering anyone, let us have a drink!

Instead, New York legalized a high that does bother other people.

You still can’t have a beer outside, but you can blow smoke at all the passersby.

It made sense to stop arresting smokers. But this isn’t that.

No one would have had a problem if marijuana became decriminalized for use in your own home or places where you really wouldn’t be affecting large swaths of the public.

But in a complete lack of consideration of any consequences, New York thoughtlessly allowed it everywhere.

Other states like Colorado and California have legalized marijuana but not public consumption.

Drug addicts of the world will get the message: New York is where you want to be.

It’s sad to watch New York become a failing experiment in legislating based on far-left ideas.

People don’t want to live like this, and they’re heading for the exits, specifically to red states.

But even some of us who have already left don’t want to see New York further decline.

Legalization of marijuana shouldn’t have meant saturation. Rethink this law, New York, and fast!

Karol Markowicz is co-author of the new book “Stolen Youth.”