The reality is beginning to seep out as much as they try to plug the holes at NY cannabis central with feel good press releases.
Here’s a snippet of the report
New York copied quite a few components of this failed model. Taxes on legal weed are exorbitantly high, leading most consumers to continue buying from the illegal market. One cannabis industry lobbyist estimated toward the end of 2023 that as much as 90 percent of New Yorkers still purchase weed illegally—two and a half years after legalization.
New York’s law explicitly allowed public consumption, unlike places like Amsterdam, which have designated coffee shops where people can get baked in semi-private. The result? A city where the smell of marijuana permeates the streets, frustrating residents who didn’t sign up for this level of exposure.
Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and professor at John Jay College, says this rise in open drug use coincided with broader declines in quality of life. “Legal weed came at the same time as rising public disorder,” Moskos says. “It gets blamed for bigger problems.” The fix for the rampant public disorder, both real and perceived, is somewhat obvious: Allow cops to police low-level quality-of-life offenses again, restoring order to places like the subway system. The more order you have across the city, the less pot will be viewed as the convenient scapegoat for all manner of social ills.
https://reason.com/video/2025/03/11/new-yorks-weed-nightmare/
