While running for office, Bill de Blasio promised that as mayor he would amend the practice of singling out young black and Latino men for unfair and, in some cases, illegal arrests for possessing minuscule amounts of marijuana. Though the charges are often dismissed, the arrests can cost people their jobs and access to housing or the prospect of joining the armed forces.
Mayor de Blasio tackled part of this problem on Monday when he announced a new policy under which people found with tiny amounts of marijuana would typically be issued a ticket akin to a traffic summons, instead of being arrested and charged with a crime.
The policy, however, does not reach the fundamental problem of discriminatory policing that disproportionately affects minorities, even though whites use marijuana at similar levels. Moreover, by shifting marijuana cases from the regular courts into the summons system, which does not identify the accused by race, the city loses the ability to track the disparate impact that petty marijuana prosecutions are having on minority communities. The city has to make the summons system more transparent.
[For more of this story go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...arijuana-policy.html]
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