New York Reaches Deal to Legalize Recreational Marijuana

forbes.com

18 points·samizdis··9 comments

I wondered how long they’d hold out with everyone around them, including their Canadian neighbors, legalizing it. That’s a lot of tax revenue going somewhere else. And sure enough, that’s pretty much what those quoted in the article said.

60k jobs can’t hurt post COVID

Bloomberg report cited in Forbes article:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-tax-report/deal-reached-...

The amount for localities (3% of 350m is 10m) seems pretty measly but good news...

Useless without restorative justice for incarcerated people with weed raps.

What is the idea of restorative justice here? There’s no victim for these crimes-at-the-time to be “restored”.

Related, I’m in favor of immediately releasing all non-violent possession and non-violent street-level distribution charges (and I doubt my view is uncommon).

I would want at the very least to have it expunged from their record and not count as an arrest/conviction. I think at bare minimum we can afford that.

I’m on board with expunging the convictions as well.

The arrest is a fact that’s harder to change. Federal security clearance asks about any arrests; it’s still illegal federally; I don’t think lying will work well (lying on a security clearance question is worse than the underlying facts), but that’s a bit of a corner case and no reason not to do the 99% effective action you propose.

Just that, release and expungement. The incarcerated person is the victim here.

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