19/Dec/2015(Sat)

[yoon.]

In New Era for Marijuana, New York Smokers Get Bolder

It wafts down the pavement, an unmistakable odor more Haight-Ashbury than New York — the tang of marijuana smoke in the city’s streets. If the smell (and the lightheadedness a passer-by may feel) is anything to judge by, lighting up and strolling around seems increasingly common in pockets of Brooklyn, on side streets in Manhattan and in other public spaces.

Street smokers say they are emboldened by laws that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana in other parts of the country and by the relatively low-key comments by New York’s leaders, including the police commissioner, about the drug.

Interviews with people who said they had smoked marijuana in public yielded a general sentiment that they felt much more secure doing so today than they would have not long ago.

Still, in New York, smoking marijuana in public remains an arresting offense, though the policy for possessing, but not lighting, a small amount of marijuana has changed with officers issuing summonses instead of making arrests. Some people say the scent is merely another whiff of gentrification as outsiders from places with less prudish approaches to marijuana colonize hip neighborhoods and import their own social mores.

In the East Village on Saturday. Marijuana smokers say they are emboldened by how New York’s leaders talk about the drug. CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

As he walked with his cousin past Gramercy Park in Manhattan on a recent afternoon, John Jay, 25, inhaled deeply from a rolled paper joint and explained how attitudes had shifted. “Even in high school, you would kind of look left and right — ‘Are you good to roll?’ ” he said. “ ‘Are you O.K. to spark?’ We’d find a spot to hide.”

Now, Mr. Jay, who works in catering, said he smoked in public with a sense of impunity. “Here in New York City, because we know it’s legal in other states, we kind of have that feeling the legalization of marijuana is spreading across the nation, and it’s going to come regardless,” he said.

Recreational use of marijuana has been legalized in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington State and Washington, D.C. In New York State, the use of marijuana for certain medical conditions was made legal last year, though dispensaries have not yet opened. In New York City last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced that the police would no longer arrest people possessing 25 grams of marijuana or less and would use their discretion in issuing a ticket for the offense.

During a news conference in October, Mr. Bratton spoke about how he had run into a young woman smoking marijuana in the financial district while on his way to a morning appointment and had let her off with a warning. “All of a sudden, there it is, that smell,” he told reporters. “What the hell — 8:30 on Wall Street?”

Despite anecdotal evidence, and a telltale odor in the air, quantifying whether street smoking is more preval‎ent than before is challenging. Arrests for smoking marijuana are included as part of the Police Department’s database of arrests for possessing the drug and are not a separate category.

Arrests have fallen in the past year. More than 26,000 people were arrested in 2014 for criminal possession of marijuana in the fifth degree, which included openly burning a joint and possessing more than 25 grams, according to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Through September of this year, about 12,500 had been arrested, according to the division’s data. A decision to end the stop-and-frisk policing policy last year may also have contributed to the drop. By comparison, summonses for possession have risen, with the total for this year already surpassing the total for all of last year.

On message boards and blogs, people note that the scent can peak in parts of Brooklyn as the morning commute gears up, with smokers taking drags between sips of coffee. In the spring, Fox News broadcast a report noting the stench on the jogging paths of Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, right next to Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence. Outside Eataly, the sprawling Italian marketplace in the Flatiron district, the smell from a joint on a recent weekday battled the aroma of espresso beans.

While some New Yorkers’ behavior may have changed, the consequences for possessing a lit joint are still the same — it is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine and up to 90 days in jail.

But New Yorkers say it is undeniably in the air.

“Long time ago they used to hide and do it, and now they are doing it out in the open,” Tanya Polite, 49, said as she delivered sandwiches to preschoolers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I smell it a lot. I smell it and go, ‘Pee-ew!’ The smell is so powerful, when you inhale it you get like a contact — a dizzy spell.”

To Ms. Polite and others, open-air marijuana smokers do so to thumb their noses at the police. Others, like Anne Collins, who has lived in Williamsburg for many years, say it is a symptom of an influx of outsiders who bring their values with their suitcases.

“It’s not that it’s New York is a pothead county, or city, it’s you’ve got all these people coming from other places,” Ms. Collins, 53, said. “French, German, Chinese, they are all here. Not to mention all of the Californian yuppies. They carry on their lives as they did where they were.”

Whether a person believes smoking marijuana in public is permissible in New York City can vary depending upon a person’s race, said Harry G. Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College and a researcher with the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, which studies trends in the enforcement of marijuana laws.

Through September of this year, 11,099, or nearly 89 percent of those arrested on charges of possessing marijuana in the fifth degree were black or Hispanic, according to the Division of Criminal Justice Services. For the same period, 997 white people were arrested, about 8 percent of the total.

“Somebody who grew up and has lived most of their life in a largely white area, is used to having the police ignore this behavior,” Professor Levine said. “Then they come to the big city, and it’s: ‘Woo woo woo! It must be more liberal here!’ ”

That seemed to be the attitude of a businessman visiting from Florida, as he puffed a marijuana cigarette on a recent afternoon outside a restaurant in the East Village.

“I would have still done this back in the day,” said the man, who was in town for a concert featuring the Grateful Dead, and who declined to give his name because what he was doing was illegal. “But in secret.”

The prime minister’s raising of the stakes with other EU governments over migrants’ benefits is a risky move

Dec 12th 2015 | BRUSSELS, LONDON AND PARIS | From the print edition

UNLIKE earlier Eurospats, David Cameron’s campaign for European Union reform had seemed to be going more or less to plan—until this month. The Tory party won an unexpected majority in May, so the prime minister had to honour his commitment to wring a few concessions for Britain from the EU and hold an in/out referendum by the end of 2017. But he was diplomatic enough to meet all 27 other heads of government and even leaders of the European Parliament before putting his demands on the table. And when he set them out in a letter to the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, they were calculated to be achievable.

The prime minister’s watchword was flexibility, in four areas. He wanted the EU to become more competitive and pursue more trade deals. He sought a bigger role for national parliaments and a recognition that Britain was not bound by the goal of “ever closer union”. He demanded guarantees that euro-zone members would not discriminate against non-members. And he called for an end to “benefits tourism” by stopping EU migrants claiming in-work tax credits and housing benefits until they had been in Britain for four years.

Most of these reforms were doable, even if some governments sucked their teeth for form’s sake. Mr Cameron did his bit by not insisting on a new treaty: he merely wanted his changes to be “legally binding and irreversible”. As one French official puts it, clarifications of the treaties are fine, but changes are not.

The exception to the harmony was the benefits change, which other governments declared illegal under EU laws on non-discrimination and free movement of labour. Even here Mr Cameron offered flexibility: if another solution could be found, he would consider it. Proposals to redesign the British benefits system on contributory lines were a non-starter. But there was talk of a four-year residency requirement that would catch young Britons as well as EU migrants. And a new debate has begun about allowing Britain to impose an emergency brake on migrant workers.

The stage was thus set for a deal at an EU summit on December 17th-18th and a referendum in the first half of 2016. But then Mr Cameron dropped a bombshell. Far from being flexible, he demanded an early protocol (a treaty needing to be ratified by all national parliaments) to permit the bar on in-work benefits for four years. He hinted that if this were rejected he might lead the Brexit campaign himself. Mr Tusk’s response was swift. He called Mr Cameron’s demand “most delicate” and declared that it had no support (one of his advisers says flatly that it is 27 against one). And he said there was now no chance of a deal in December, though he hoped a compromise might be found in February.

Why has Mr Cameron raised the stakes like this? One answer is the appeal of brinkmanship. He knows no EU country wants Brexit, so his bargaining position seems strong. His party fondly recalls Margaret Thatcher’s tough negotiations to win a European budget rebate. Four years ago Mr Cameron basked in Westminster ovations after “vetoing” an EU fiscal treaty, even though it went ahead without him. The British love of one against all in Brussels dies hard (see Charlemagne).

Mr Cameron’s team also thinks the benefits demand is justified. Welfare is a national not a European competence. Several countries have discriminatory laws: Denmark limits foreign property-buying, Germany wants to impose motorway tolls on non-Germans, the Dutch are said to discriminate financially against other EU students. Britain is seeing a big inflow of EU migrants (see chart).

Few migrants come just to collect benefits. Stephen Nickell of the Office of Budget Responsibility, Britain’s fiscal watchdog, suggested this week that the four-year bar would not reduce migration by much. Yet the fact that low-paid jobs taken by migrants attract generous tax credits and housing benefits from the start seems unfair to many voters. Some ministers say that without some change, the referendum will be lost. And after embarrassingly losing a House of Lords vote on tax-credit cuts in October, Mr Cameron is loth to solve his problem by curbing benefits for all.

He is also impatient with lawyers who bleat about breaches of the treaties. Some officials in London thought the benefits proposal could pass without treaty change, but they were overruled. Mr Cameron hopes that in February political leaders will be willing to go over the heads of mere lawyers. Yet there are three big reasons to worry about his tactics.

One is that, unlike the Thatcher budget rows, there is no easy way to split the difference. If the benefits change is unlawful, it may be overturned by an individual appeal to the European Court of Justice unless the treaty is changed. A two-year limit is no better than a four-year one. And it is surely politically impossible for parliaments in Poland, Slovakia, Romania or Bulgaria to ratify a treaty authorising discrimination against their own citizens.

Second, prolonged argument over welfare benefits could further delay the referendum. Most pollsters reckon a later vote is likely to boost the leave campaign. Avoidance of delay was a big reason why the government this week pressed the House of Commons swiftly to overturn a House of Lords plan to extend the referendum franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds.

The third concern is that a fuss over migrants’ benefits has the effect of putting immigration at the heart of the debate. The UK Independence Party’s leader, Nigel Farage, has long tried to make the referendum a vote not about the EU but about limiting migrant numbers (see article). Mr Cameron promised in 2010 to get net immigration below 100,000 a year, yet his target seems more elusive than ever.

Some in the EU have a deeper fear. Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think-tank, says officials in Berlin and Brussels fret that if Mr Cameron cannot secure his demands on benefits, he will choose to go for Brexit. Polls have recently been moving against staying in. The Danish government’s recent loss of a referendum on opting in to some EU justice and home-affairs laws shows how hard it is to win such votes.

More likely, Mr Cameron’s latest demand is a gamble. Quite apart from the potential economic damage of Brexit, his political future and his influence over the choice of his successor would surely suffer. Complex negotiations over the terms of withdrawal would dominate the rest of his government. Brinkmanship can work in Brussels. But the trouble with gamblers is that they often get the odds wrong.

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