Casinos? Marijuana? Why NY should stop trying to – Latest News
It’s dangerous enough when authorities acquiesces in societal degradation by winking at “broken windows,” the “minor” crimes that precede homicide, rape, assault and general civic breakdown.
But it’s immeasurably worse when elected officers and their functionaries themselves wield the bats and throw the stones. This is the lamentable state of issues in New York City, a hapless creature of the state authorities in Albany that wields far an excessive amount of sway over Big Apple affairs.
Our elected governors and legislators actively abet actions as soon as broadly and correctly understood to be critical vices, however are right now regarded in lots of elite minds as innocent habits and mere “lifestyle” decisions.”
A rendering of the on line casino proposed by Wynn at Hudson Yards. Wynn just lately withdrew their on line casino plan citing unviability, a transfer different on line casino operators vying for a spot in Gotham should additionally take into account. Related Companies and Wynn Resorts
Casino playing, like lotteries and sports activities betting, successfully imposes a regressive tax on these least ready to afford it. It facilitates organized crime and infrequently, if ever, delivers the financial and employment advantages claimed for it by well-paid lobbyists.
Albany legislators in 2022 voted to authorize up to three new on line casino licenses downstate, together with within the Big Apple. Real property corporations teamed up with on line casino operators and rushed in with proposals. One outstanding partnership, Related Companies and Wynn Resorts, yanked its scheme for a complicated at Hudson Yards from consideration this week, leaving eight proposals nonetheless in rivalry.
Today, the town’s economic system is on an upswing from COVID-era doldrums. The COVID-hobbled real estate market is surging anew. Nearly all the roles misplaced to the pandemic have been regained. Tourism hit a near-record high in 2024.
What functions, then, would casinos serve at, for instance, the Coney Island Boardwalk or subsequent to Citi Field? Only to additional impoverish lower-income residents lured by the false promise of riches. And, of course, to fatten the wallets of builders, on line casino moguls, and politicians, to whom will redound incalculable largesse from the beneficiaries of their assist.
New York has a doubtful historical past in its efforts to legalize vice. The state legalized marijuana in 2021, which led to a whole lot of unlawful pot outlets, together with a handful of fancy hashish dispensaries like Doobie. Emmy Park
Next up: marijuana. The dangers of unchecked consumption are no secret, together with the weed’s addictive properties that may lead to mental sickness and to abuse of stronger medication, legal and unlawful.
New York decriminalized marijuana in 2019. But, as one socially aware Mafia don thundered in “The Godfather,” the commerce can be “controlled.” There can be strict licensing agreements! Big fines for ignoring them!
Ahem — eradicating felony penalties sparked a entire new industry of hundreds of unlicensed distributors within the 5 boroughs.
Rather than mitigate the harm achieved by pot, the luxurious new outlets merely camouflage it in high design. Emmy Park
City Hall and the NYPD cracked down, shuttering many a whole lot of creepy institutions (the Times Square Alliance factors out that each one however two of 13 unlicensed retailers figuring out of storefronts on Seventh and Eighth avenues have been padlocked since final summer season).
But whereas the closings of dope outlets full of visibly sinister actions got here as a aid, the Legislature’s zeal to flaunt its Woke credentials didn’t spare us from the scourge of legal pot peddlers, whose numbers have multiplied.
The motto of Charlie Fox, a three-story emporium at Seventh Avenue and West forty ninth Street that appears more like a supper membership, is “cannabis presented through a luxury lens.”
There at the moment are rumblings that New York could take into account decriminalizing prostitution. NYPJ
The proliferation of properly designed, state-sanctioned “dispensaries” may need a worse impact on public notion than their creepy predecessors. Surely, merchandise offered in a “curated” atmosphere by “knowledgeable budtenders,” because the inaptly named Travel Agency on Fifth Avenue boasts, can’t be dangerous for you, proper?
Prostitution is the subsequent frontier for many who would decriminalize the whole lot short of first-degree homicide.
The state has chipped away at legal guidelines governing “sex workers” since 2013. Women arrested for flesh-peddling have been diverted to “Human Trafficking Intervention Courts,” the place arrested perpetrators typically had prices diminished or thrown out. As famous by City Journal’s Seth Barron, the outcome was that New York City prostitution-related arrests fell from tens of hundreds within the Nineteen Eighties to barely 100 in 2022 (additionally due to much less aggressive policing and to “bail reform”).
It took months earlier than Queens’ prostitution drawback was tackled, which solely additional compromised the protection of the ladies impacted by the intercourse commerce, critics declare. NYPJ
Perceptions that the law was going straightforward on prostitutes yielded sidewalk concentrations of hustling, body-selling girls for the primary time in many years. The scourge on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights went unchecked till this newspaper just lately known as consideration to it, prompting the NYPD to lastly crack down.
However, radical legislators together with state Senate members Julia Salazar and Jessica Ramos, whose districts embrace components of Queens and Brooklyn, advocate for complete decriminalization.
But who’re the victims of casinos, dope shops and “sex work”? Those who can least afford them, the deprived and poor for whom lefty legislators fake to advocate — by no means thoughts the depressing penalties for them of what we as soon as known as vice. scuozzo@nypost.com
