Selective Intoxication

I live a scant three miles from New York City. Those three miles are significant in terms of governance - I'm not subject to NYC laws or taxation. They're also significant in terms of lifestyle - while my environs are more urban than suburban, I still enjoy ease of parking and other "suburban" features that are mostly alien in the city proper.

I also have a "best of both worlds" benefit in terms of city life. With proper timing and a blessing from the traffic gods, I can excurse to "the city," aka Manhattan, in a manageable amount of time, and partake of "the city's" offerings (as well as hang out with friends therein). Yes, this makes me, in the local vernacular, "B&T" aka "Bridge and Tunnel," an aspersion cast upon residents of the outer boroughs and the rest of the Metropolitan Area by those who live on Manhattan Island itself, but I find that hysterical, because it's so often cast by people who got off the bus from West Bumblebum, Middle-of-Nowhere five minutes ago in order to live in a shoebox between the Hudson and East Rivers.

Two days ago, I ventured into midtown to catch a club concert. And, as seems to always be the case now, walking the streets of "the city" includes the pervasive whiff of skunk, as in pot smoke. Really, it's a more common smell than hot-subway or roasting pretzels or any of the other scents of the city I grew up with. Ever since pot was legalized (an act I supported and still support, despite having zero interest in the product), the city has stunk of it.

I've noted, on this blog and elsewhere, that it was almost a given that pot (and other drug) legalization would be "done wrong," because those in power were bound to do so for selfish reasons than as a matter of liberty. And, sure enough, the city proliferated in unlicensed smoke shops, which are only now being belatedly cracked down upon (why? Because revenue, if we are to be honest).

Which made a story in today's New York Post stand out. It is legal to smoke pot in public in NYC. The law, generally speaking, says you can smoke pot wherever you can smoke cigarettes, with some exceptions (in a car is verboten, though I cannot count how many times I've smelled pot while driving on a road or highway with windows open or top down). It is not legal, however, to consume alcohol in public. Known as open container laws, the strictures against drinking a beer while strolling down Sixth Avenue have become de mode again, with Mayor Eric Adams siccing revenuers the NYPD on the citizenry.

Personal opinions on alcohol consumption aside, there is no transgression of another's rights if I drink a beer on a public street. If I get drunk and do harm to someone or their property, that's a whole other matter, but the latter is not a certain result from the former. The distinction, a vital one, is in crimes against others vs crimes against the State. I've heard the argument that open container laws help restrict drinking and keep it out of places where drunkenness is undesirable, but once again, the matter comes down to acts. If your sippy cup contains rum and coke instead of coffee and cream, how does it matter to me if you don't do anything to me or my stuff?

The crackdown on public consumption (not public drunkenness, mind you, I don't see reports of cops lingering outside bars at 2 AM to ticket slobs and louts spilling onto the sidewalk) reeks of "stunt." It's being touted as "broken windows" policing, i.e. the enforcement of minor infractions as a means of diminishing major ones and improving quality-of-life, but the open container law is in the same category as pot prohibition - a violation of individuals' rights born of puritanism and lacking any moral authority or redress of “crimes against others.”

The crackdown also reeks (pun intended) of hypocrisy. I am more "infringed" by walking through clouds of pot smoke than by walking by someone holding a beer, yet the former is not only legal, it's celebrated by many. Yes, legalization is a big victory for liberty, but legalizing is not the same as condoning, and pot should be viewed as the intoxicant that it is.

Do I think that public smoking of pot should be criminalized and ticketed? No. But it shouldn't be exalted the way it is now. Public pressure contributed substantially to the decline in cigarette smoking, and society doesn't look upon drunks favorably.

At the core of the matter, none of these vices should be looked upon as revenue generators for the government. Prohibition gave birth to organized crime. Cigarette taxes created a lucrative black market in NYC, where 60% of cigarettes sold are either smuggled or counterfeit. Drug prohibition created multinational drug cartels. Gambling restrictions offered the Mob a lucrative revenue stream. Legalization, where it has happened, has usually been accompanied with "the government must get its taste," and that's why it has gone wrong in so many places.

All such actions, across decades, have increased the adversarial nature of citizens-vs-cops in situations where citizens aren't hurting anyone. Want to fix community-law enforcement relations? Stop using cops as revenue agents. And, for pity's sake, stop tacitly exalting one vice while deriding another.