Smokeing pot in public is can be a nuisance. Just smoke in your home or someplace secluded if you must toke. Drugs do bring neighborhoods down.

oh my god smoking pot in public in new york,big freaking deal. new york has always been pot friendly since laguardia for crying out loud. partly why it was the the east coast mecca for various subcultures, from jazz to the beats to bad-ass-wannabe hip hoppers. it no doubt is partly responsible for the "edge" of new york that is so attractive to the transplants that become enchantted with it and makes them boast to your friends at home about how exciting and weird things happen there. until it burns you out in a few years that is.

in fact, during dinkins' reign, cops would walk right by someone smoking up. it is still a $25 summons for posession, but smoking in public is technically arrestable,especially in herr giulianis police state.even if you do get arrested-one night in jail and time served.it all depends on the cop, your attitude, and whether it is sweep day. actually, while smoking in the trains at about 8pm midtown,two transit cops got on and said put out the cigarrette,and they knew becausme it reeked. trains,street,driving, no big deal. i smoke all the time and only got summonsed once even tho the cool cop wrote it out to be invalid-still took it tho.and another time when they made me step uon it.and if anyone has a problem with it,native or not, then leave.so relaxand light one up just not in washington square park..

I smoke grass, but I don't understand the need to do it in public. It's pretty reasonable for people not to want to be exposed to me getting high. It's not asking too much that I smoke in my apartment or in a friend's. If I absolutely must smoke grass and I'm not at someone's place, I will do it in a fairly secluded area of a park or something. I like smoking grass as much as the next guy but I am not so obsessed with getting high that I just absolutely must do it in public. Brazen public pot-smoking is clearly a rather sad attempt by some people to get attention.

is this really that big a deal? i don't live in nyc, but on a visit there about 10 years ago a group of us lit up on the sidewalk, several times over several days, all around midtown in an attempt to not get busted at the hotel and thrown out. the closest call we had was when a cruiser headed down the street toward us -- not after us, just coming in our direction. the homeless dude half a block down very kindly clued us in to the approaching cop. he got a well-earned 5 bucks and many thank-yous. that said, it didn't seem like it was that big a deal. have things really changed that much since the mid-'90s? this was after giuliani disney-fied times square, btw.

i've smoked many joints on elevated subway platforms. blunts on sidestreets in manhattan, and bowls on riverside drive; all at night though. it's almost as if smoking weed is legal again.

"People shouldn't be punished for what they put into their bodies as long as they're not hurting anyone else."

I agree. In my neighborhood, I'd argue that it does hurt everybody else. The housing part of the neighborhood has always been nice and it is a very diverse gateway neighborhood for immigrants, mainly from africa and eastern europe. The high school across the street from me is the third public high school I've lived by and it is by far the worst I have seen. Some of the kids come from sketchier neighborhoods north and south of my neighborhood via the train. They roll joints on the train and light them up as they step off. After school the neighborhood attracts non-student gangbangers and drug dealers. At the el stop, packs of the urban terrorists mingle with all the good and bad students. They all loiter, yell profanities, crowd the convenience store, walk in packs daring anyone NOT to step out of their way. There are fights and local residents have been assaulted for no reason. This kills the retail investment in the neighborhood. After 10:00 p.m., the streets are desolate. As I said, these kids get their pot from drug dealers and gangbangers who compete for territory nearby. There are frequent gang-related shootings and assaults two blocks east of me, near the el. Before Christmas I had two guys arrested for shooting off their semi-auto (seven pops) in my alley. People drive into the area to buy drugs.

When you pass 10 to 20 fifteen and sixteen year olds getting high at 7:30 in the morning on their way to school and see the older and scarier degenerates trying to sell to and recruit them, it's pretty easy to figure out it affects the overall quality of life in the neighborhood. Condoning blatant illegal behavior is part of this equation. I wish the cops would bust them. To me it's like public drinking. If you're discreet, the cops won't hassle you. If you've got it out in the open and you're making a racket, you deserve to be busted because it's less about what you are doing and more about how your behavior hurts others.

I've lived in cities for 15 of my 33 years but I don't see what difference my 'street cred' makes. My grandmother and my aunts and uncles have lived here their whole lives and watched every neighborhood they lived in turn to absolute shit.

I'll shut up now and you can all breathe (exhale) a sigh of relief ;)

About a month ago, coming down from 125th Street to 116th Street on the B train with my wife, a fellow wearing no shoes (but yes, socks) walked into our car of the train, hunkered down in the corner seat of the car, and shakily proceeded to light and smoke a rock of crack, after which he blew the smoke straight at us.

No s**t.

Now that's ballsy. Kudos!

I smoke pot on the streets of Manhattan as I have for the past 20 years. I'm white so the cops don't hassle me (sorry, but it is true) except to say to knock it off every once and a while. Never been arrested and never had much of a problem with it. Yes, when Rudy took office I have found it better to be wise about where you smoke (eg. not walking down Park ave) but really not that much of a change except other people NOT smoking and giving me funny looks. All you NYC transplants need to get the pole out of your ass. My pot smoke is not going to change the property value of your neighborhood or corrupt your over-medicated rug rat for Pete's sake.

People shouldn't be punished for what they put into their bodies as long as they're not hurting anyone else.

NYPD makes about 50,000 arrests each year for marijuana offenses. That, to me, is far worse than the consumption of a plant.

I just want to place some perspective on pot and why some people--such as anon--in NYC really have no issue with pot, but did grow up in an NYC where casually smoking pot did not exist.

When I was growing up in Brighton Beach/Coney Island absolutely/positively nobody who smoked pot in the neighborhood simply smoked pot. It was the drug that people who really did hardcore stuff smoked casual between doing other things. Coke, heroin, etc. And even then, the post they smoked was dusted. It was nasty and copletely fills the "gateway drug" perspective of pot use.

It was only when I went to college that the idea that you could just smoke pot and do nothing else popped up. And at that point I realized there's a strong difference between people growing up with urban drug-use patterns and suburban drug-use patterns. Very few people I knew growing up in NYC ever really had a casual perpective on pot use. You just needed to grow up in NYC during the 70s and 80s to see that casual use simply was not even a concept--let alone a practice--back then.

So I'd cut anon some slack.

Asianrut, when I said "so liberal and afraid" I was addressing your good point in using the word "afraid" and I was also addressing the opinion of posters like 'dan' in my use of the term "liberal." Not "liberal" in the political ideology sense (I'm all for that), but "liberal" in the "quality of life crimes are cool and part of living in the city so shut up and deal with it or move" sense. If everyone had that attitude, NYC and Chicago would still resemble the 1980s. I don't find thugs strutting around smoking blunts and bringing my neighborhood down to be something I should relocate over just because I don't accept it.

A whole other issue is the fact that most of these kids aren't buying their weed from dan's 'connection' or that lovable harmless stoner who works in the mailroom and grows sweet hydroponic in his closet. They more than likely are getting it from the same scum offering rock and H.

asianrut: does it really bother you that much? if so, do you always solve your petty annoyances by cursing at strangers? can you move somewhere else?

um, what has this city come to? has anyone here lived here for like, more than six years? seeing someone smoke a joint on their stoop is now worth blogging about? what's next? articles about underage kids drinking wine coolers?

In response to the anonymous poster...I don't think it's a case of people being so "liberal," it's more that they're afraid of the kids themselves. It's all about image. Generally when someone sees a kid walking down the street, basically limping as if part of his leg was blown off in a war (but really, trying to make like his balls are way too big for him to walk normally) and wearing clothing ten times too big for his size, you're going to be a little reluctant to say, "hey asshole, knock it off." Speaking of which: don't be afraid to tell public tokers off! Marijuana tends to make people a little more mellow, remember? And besides...I'm sure the majority of people do not appreciate their public use, so you at least have other people to back you up (hopefully).

I live in Chicago where "quality of life" laws are basically not enforced at all, which encourages lawless behavior. In Chicago, the undercovers would have ignored the joint-roller and would have instead given a sleeping passenger a ticket for snoozing on the train. I see high school students smoking fat joints and blunts almost every morning. They smoke it openly on my sidewalk, strutting along and glaring at everyone. They sometimes smoke it in my front yard because my building is right around the corner from their school. Some of them light up before the exit the el station, so you can smell the weed while going up the stairs. I also see people smoking pot downtown on occasion, right out in the open. And of course, the city downgraded posession of small amounts of weed to a finable offense only, which means more lowlifes getting high all over my neighborhood. I don't mind people in general smoking weed, even if they're kids trying to be at least somewhat discreet ... but I'm sick of the antisocial, in-your-face practice of smoking it openly. It's just kids emulating their pop culture thug heroes and everybodys so liberal and afraid to tell them to knock it off. There's more public weed smoking in my neighborhood than there is on the street in Amsterdam.

I was on the A train riding between 59th and 125th and this group of kids not only rolled a joint, but they smoked it as well. Kind of ballsy huh? It wasn't rush hour or anything, but still.

even after all these years, nyc still tends to be weed-friendly. gotta love the deliverydudes.

a friend of mine used to walk around with a half-smoked j jammed into his mouth because he "liked the way it tastes." and he was always ready to light up.

ah.... one-hitters in the park on a sunny day :)

the puerto rican day parade was in transit in the subway... one parader stepped onto the subway with a bowl which got passed around the entire subway car

A couple of weeks ago I saw a middle-aged biker guy snort coke or some other powdered drug on a manhattan-bound F train during the morning rush. He just took a little plastic baggy filled with white powder out of one pocket, and grabbed a straw from the other one. He then stuck the straw in the bag, snorted it, wiped off his nose, and put it all away. A couple other passengers and I just stared at each other in disbelief as the man started to mutter nonsensical things.

Pop Burger near Union Square a few years back, when they had those glass/mirror table. My brother in law was meeting us for a drink (pretty straigh laced guy). Table next to us dumps an 8 ball plus on the table and just chalks em up. Place was packed at the moment. Thought is strange but no one seemed to care. They finished over the next 1/2 hour and continued on their way (all be it jacked out of their minds)