The deal this week between the Manhattan district attorney and a marjiuana-monger who built a small empire of illegal shops speaks volumes about the madness of New York’s pot-legalization rollout.
And how badly officials have allowed the city’s quality of life to degrade.
Under the deal, Rami Alzandani, who was accused of operating 11 illegal pot stores, will pay $103,000 in restitution and turn over another $300,000 in profit as part of a non-prosecution agreement.
His businesses can remain open but are subject to regular, random checks for three years.
So his total hit is an average $37,000 per store — arguably small enough to be seen as a mere cost of doing illegal business.
And what about the other 1,500 or so illegal pot shops?
Weed stores seem like they’re on every block — yet only 20 (yes, 20!) in the whole state are fully legal.
The illicit shops began popping up all over the Big Apple quickly after the state OK’d the legalization of marijuana. City officials handed out paltry $250 fines to law-breakers, which they surely consider little more than a nuisance.
In June, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the state would crack down on these shops, raising fines, pursuing evictions and closing stores, yet after police raided two illegal stores this month, they reopened the very next day.
And don’t think the owners are committing harmless infractions.
For starters, if the shops are not sanctioned, buyers might face a higher risk of getting a tainted product, or one different than advertised.
And they’re crime magnets: Unlicensed smoke shops saw 593 robberies in 2022, a more than four-fold spike from 2021, according to the NYPD. That poses risks for customers as well as workers.
In June, a clerk was stabbed during one of these robberies at a store that had reportedly been targeted three times by the same group of thieves.
Unregulated weed stores can also create an environment that’s wholly out of place for its location — one more sock at the quality of life and sense of order in the city.
Finally, their unchecked proliferation reinforces the already-pervasive notion that it pays to break laws in New York.
That message has grown wildly since the city ditched “broken windows” policing (cracking down on small crimes to prevent larger ones) under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Legislature passed pro-criminal laws, and progressive district attorneys announced their refusal to prosecute whole categories of crime.
It’s a recipe for lawlessness and disorder, with the public paying the price.
If New York truly wants to restore sanity and civility on its streets, cracking down on these shops isn’t a bad place to start.
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NY's out-of-control pot shops highlight the drop in the quality of life - New York Post
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