Clean Slates Promised Under New York Marijuana Law Prove Complicated

When New York legalized recreational marijuana two years ago, it was meant to tear up the path to prison that being convicted of possession had long paved.

But even as legalization took effect and New Yorkers could smoke with impunity, Frederick Volkman was sent to a maximum-security prison after violating the terms of his probation on a 2019 felony marijuana charge. Locked up with violent criminals, he did his best to avoid confrontations.

“I saw people out in the yard getting cut — there was a fight almost every day,” Mr. Volkman, 26, recalled in a phone interview from prison. He said there had been several suicide attempts: “I saw one person get pulled out of their cell on a stretcher.”

Thanks to the 2021 law, Mr. Volkman, who is to be released on Monday from a boot camp-style lockup, is one of the few remaining prisoners in New York incarcerated solely because of marijuana charges, officials said.

He will return to a world where marijuana seems to be everywhere, sold from storefronts and vending trucks, its aroma wafting on the street and from moving cars. But as many New Yorkers light up freely, complications created by the law linger, including thousands of uncleared felony charges that recall the state’s earlier, draconian approach to prosecution.

[Read more at The New York Times]