EVG contributor Stacie Joy was in Union Square yesterday for the annual parade.
Here's more from a report today in Crain's:
Known until a few years ago as “Cures Not Wars,” and now as the NYC Cannabis Parade, New York’s annual rally in support of legalization has been held in various forms since the early 1970s. This year, the event culminated in a gathering at Union Square. As blunts and pipes were passed around, speakers attempted to educate the crowd about the Marijuana Taxation and Regulation Act (S. 1747/A. 3089A) that is currently stalled in the state legislature.
“We’ve been doing this for four decades. If we don’t get involved and do the hard work, it’s not going to go anywhere,” said Doug Greene, legislative director of Empire State NORML, the New York chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Just coming here and listening to me speak and getting high is not going to change anything.”
Some would say the fact that the NYPD did not seem interested in arresting anyone who was getting high at the event was a major shift in and of itself. Although the NYPD cut its marijuana arrests in half last year, 16,590 people were still cuffed for low-level marijuana possession, about 88% of whom were black or Latino.
New York has launched a medical-marijuana program, with one of the dispensaries located nearby on East 14th Street. Dennis Levy, a lifelong marijuana legalization advocate, called the New York program "frustrating and flawed."
14 comments:
Man, there was a FANTASTIC group of storefronts around here that "dispensed" pot back in the 1940s/1950s.....NO taxes....NO pretty little containers/baggies.....but, unfortunately, LOTSA BULLSHIT trying to avoid puckered assholes like this :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2546201/When-weed-grew-wild-Williamsburg-1950s.html
But don't get too excited.....that Brooklyn pot was crap (as was much of the herb available at that time in Amerika).....that's one of the reasons why mezz (=slang for Mexican....see Mezz Mezzrow) got popular so quickly.
Sittin' here pondering some of this history, I take another look at EVG's pics in this post.....and I shake my head (pfsssttttt....hahhhhhhh) in wonder.
Keep on chooglin'!
As a former smoker (and one currently uncertain whether increased "recreational" use of marijuana will be good or bad for the US), I propose that we at least wait until it is legalized before using it for "recreation".
There is so much bloodshed, not only the gruesome slayings in Mexico but also by the gangland traffickers in the US, that I consider smoking grass now to be effectively subsidizing gang terror and murder.
These days it is not treated as a "sacrament" anyway, but as just another drug. I think we can wait for (and lobby for, if you believe it to be a potentially greater good) legalization before getting stoned. If you cannot, please ask yourself why not.
And, BTW, I recall when the smell of marijuana was really pleasant; these days everybody smells like a frightened skunk.
If the gentleman in photo #9 were dressed in purple I would swear Adam had come back from the dead for the festivities !
Bloomturd and Fat Boy Christie believe that weed is a “gateway” drug and users should be arrested. And 1.13 PM, you’re right, the new weed does have that skunk stink smell. Hopeful that NYS goes the CO route. It can't happen soon enough. And the "artisanal" legal weed, I'm guessing (?) does not have that kind of skunk smell?
The war on drugs like weed is insane. Weed is a Schedule I drug? A 1930's racist classification from the get go.
I'm for legalizing marijuana only no smoking on the street or in public places, only at home, and you have to block out the smell when smoking at home with incense or whatever cuz not everyone wants to smell it - I don't.
Also no DWHigh.
I think that's fair.
Where's David Peel?
After a recent trip to Denver and LA I feel sorry for NY stoners. I went to clean well run dispensaries and bought weed cheaper and more potent than the crap in NYC. No police worries either. If you want edibles they had cookies brownies gummy bears candy bars energy drinks. They even have medicated butter and bbq sauce. They have medicated breath spray and strips and pain creams too. Its mind boggling coming from NY. NY is so far behind. And it didnt smell like skunk at all. Most of it is grown in CA and CO. Legization and domestic production ends most cartel influence.
Never was a fan of the stuff, to me it's smoking and it WIILL affect your health. Don't believe it should be a crime to buy, sell or smoke. Make it taxable like alcohol and cigarettes so at least some social good comes from it.
The time to have "tea" shops instead of tea houses has come at last. Now that our governments (local, state and federal) have realized that it is far more beneficial financially to legalize Mary Jane than to criminalize possession of weed, they will start to have more success by controlling the flow of grass by allowing the people to roll their own doobies. A chicken in every pot and some pot in every kitchen.
What happen to all the Yippies of days gone
Just to round things out here, this is from "Follow The Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records" (1998) by Jac Holzman (owner of label) and Gavan Daws.
The quotation is from singer-songwriter Paul Siebel, discussing the late 1950s/early 1960s Village:
"There was pot on the streets. You could be pretty casual about it. I can remember the cop on the beat, Jack, and the other good-looking one asking us to 'Please smoke a little farther down the street'-if the Precinct Captain went by they would get in trouble. The stuff was all over. In everybody's apartments. All the girls and boys used it, just about everyone I knew, they would have the fixings in some wooden bowl sitting on the coffee table, with posters on the wall. In fact, the mothers of MacDougal Street were protesting, 'Do Away With The Coffee Houses', because it was corrupting the youth. Well, it was. You bet. Why else would anyone be there?
....(discussing the coffee houses further) Sometimes the girl folk singers would make a hundred a night, and I can remember making sixty and seventy, and my god, that's all we were paying a month for rent"
Great story on this. ROLL ME UP AND SMOKE ME WHEN I DIE
Would rather it be legal outside than inside. Anyone else have to live next to a wake and baker and find their apartment filled with smoke in the morning?
I am so waiting for a full legalization.
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