NY City Police Commissioner blames Marijuana for Drug Violence

Posted by Sagar Satapathy on May 24, 2016.

Taking a big jolt to the advocates of ‘recreational use of marijuana’, New York City police commissioner William Bratton has said the majority of the city's drug-related violence is related to marijuana, as he vehemently criticized the states that have legalized the substance.

'Here in New York, the violence we see associated with drugs, the vast majority of it is around the issue of marijuana,' Bratton said on Sunday during an appearance on local radio show. “Prohibition is the root cause of the vast majority of violence associated with marijuana, he said.

This isn’t the first time Bratton has linked marijuana to crime. Last year, he blamed an increase in homicides on marijuana.

However, New York State Criminal Justice Services statistics says that arrests for marijuana possession went down by 42 per cent in 2015 compared with the previous year.

Reforms in recent years have led to the relative decriminalization of marijuana in New York City, though the drug use as well as the sales of it for recreational use remains illicit.

 In 2013, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued an executive order eliminating jail time for low level possession of marijuana. In 2014, Mayor de Blasio mandated that a person possessing less than 25grams of marijuana get a ticket instead of being arrested, as long as they have ID and no outstanding warrants.

It is to be noted that first ever medical marijuana dispensary in New York City opened in January, after a state-wide ban on medicinal marijuana was lifted in 2014.

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