Cuomo challenges stop-and-frisk with legislature to decriminalize possession of <25g of marijuana

Today Andrew Cuomo announced a plan to reduce the number of people searched and subsequently arrested by Mayor Bloomberg’s racist stop-and-frisk policy.

The legislations calls for the penalty of possession of fewer than 25 grams of weed to be changed from a misdemeanor to a violation. Marijuana was decriminalized in New York State in 1977; possession of fewer than 25 grams of marijuana is a violation but once someone stopped-and-frisked, and asked to empty their pockets and their stash becomes public, it instantly becomes a misdemeanor that can result in arrest. There were over 50,000 marijuana arrests last year in New York City.

Read the full scoop at The New York Times.