Police say the marijuana-laced cartridges recovered in last week's bust are flavored and don't produce a pungent smell.
"Honeydew Mango, Sour Diesel, Pineapple Express and Wedding Cake," said Gloucester Township Police Chief Harry Earle, listing some of the flavors of the cartridges seized.
Police are also concerned about the possibility of e-cigarettes becoming a delivery device for even harder narcotics such as cocaine and heroin.
They are urging parents in the area to talk to their kids.
To say that Mayor Bill de Blasio is under a lot of pressure to reform policing in New York City would be an understatement. Among the myriad issues and complaints against the NYPD, a recent report shows that New York’s finest has arrested a disproportionate number of minorities for marijuana possession. In response to public uproar, De Blasio announced last week that the NYPD will be making major changes. First and foremost, they will no longer be arresting people for possessing small amounts of weed.
Unequal Policing in New York City
Mayor de Blasio will tell the NYPD to stop arresting people for public pot smoking — and launch a new group to officially prepare the city for the outright legalization of marijuana in New York
De Blasio, who has long opposed making recreational pot legal, now says he thinks legalization is inevitable and is creating an official task force to get ready for the day when that happens and implement the new law.
While pot remains illegal, Hizzoner will direct the NYPD to give summonses to people they catch smoking in public instead of arresting them, his aides said Sunday.
As marijuana legalization spreads into various states, some are allowing people who’d been previously been convicted of possession of a small amount of pot to clear their records.
They have their convictions either wiped off their record forever under state expungement laws or, in some cases, have low-level felony marijuana convictions be reduced to misdemeanors. In another variation, a marijuana conviction can be sealed from public view pursuant to a court order under a state’s nondisclosure law.
Fate Winslow is one of them. Crammed in a dorm with more than 80 other prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, he is serving out a life sentence. “Now pack[ed] in like sardines,” he wrote in a recent letter from the prison. They’re double-bunked and there’s no air conditioning to fight the Louisiana heat. “How is it fit to get 86 bodies no air?” he wondered. “Well you see the picture — very hot.”
“Let’s just say there are good days and bad days,” he wrote.
Black and brown New Yorkers continue to face marijuana arrests at rates nearly 10 times those of whites, despite early promises from Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the racial disparity.
While marijuana arrests have dropped significantly since the mayor took office, 86 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession in the fifth degree during 2017 were people of color; 48 percent were black and 38 percent were Hispanic. Only 9 percent were white.
Murphy successfully avoided the question throughout the election season and had remained elusive even when he become the New Jersey governor. But now it seems he’s willing to put the question to bed for good. He took to Twitter last week to reveal what many had been wondering.
“Here’s the deal: I’ve tried marijuana literally once or twice many years ago, and I don’t have any desire to partake again,” Murphy tweeted. “But this effort isn’t about me—this is about social justice.”
On Monday, The Record reported Murphy is open to the idea. And a reporter asked the Democratic governor at an unrelated news event hours later if he'd consider "wide-sweeping pardons" -- and if that would happen before weed is legalized.
Murphy replied that he didn't know about timing or if they'd be broad. But yes, he said, he's considering pardons.
Cynthia Nixon was high on legalizing weed but didn’t inhale as her fellow demonstrators openly toked during an annual pot parade in Manhattan Saturday.
“Arresting people for cannabis — particularly people of color — is the crown jewel for the racist war on drugs and we must pluck it down,” Nixon said at the NYC Cannabis Parade and Rally across from the Union Square Whole Foods.
Nearly 36,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in New Jersey in 2016, more than 32,000 of them for marijuana possession. That's about twice the number of people that live in Asbury Park.
Those charges, mostly for possession of small amounts of marijuana, often have huge impacts on the people arrested. A marijuana conviction can cause people to lose their housing, prevent them from getting financial aid, or even lose their driver's license.
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