Case in point, New York City police boasted on social media this week about what seemed like a significant drug bust: 106 pounds (48 kilograms) of funky, green plants that officers thought sure seemed like marijuana.
But the Vermont farm that grew the plants and the Brooklyn CBD shop that ordered them insisted they're actually industrial hemp, and perfectly legal. And, they said, they have paperwork to prove it.
Last week, I spoke with a college graduate in his late twenties who makes his living selling cannabis in New York, where he moved, from the Midwest, several years ago. He referred to himself as a “care provider,” and asked that I not disclose his real name. He worked in finance and freelance Web design and marketing before shifting to his current career, he said. He sells marijuana in varying amounts, from an eighth of an ounce to a full pound or more, and also sells vaporizer cartridges, infused drinks, cannabis edibles, and psychedelic mushrooms.
New York state is hosting three public listening sessions this week in New York City to gather input on proposals to legalize recreational marijuana.
The meetings are scheduled for Monday in Queens, Tuesday in Brooklyn and Wednesday on Staten Island.
Several listening sessions have already been held upstate, and more are planned throughout the state.
On Friday two more in Westchester and Suffolk counties were added to the calendar for October.
Tens of thousands of low-level marijuana convictions could be erased with the OK of Brooklyn's top prosecutor, under a new plan for wiping records clean of offenses no longer being prosecuted in parts of the nation's biggest city.
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced Friday he is inviting people to request conviction dismissals. He expects prosecutors will consent in the great majority of a potential 20,000 cases since 1990 and an unknown number of older ones.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo took a step closer to voicing full-throated support for legal marijuana on Friday, embracing elements of a state Health Department report that favored legalization.
Mr. Cuomo, addressing reporters after an unrelated speech in Brooklyn, said New York would no longer have the option of trying to simply prevent the flow of the drug into the state now that its neighbors in Massachusetts and New Jersey are moving forward with plans to legalize the drug.