By Carol Tannenhauser
Monday, June 20, 2022
Fair. High 81 degrees.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. (Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner.) Check out this feature! It’s updated every week to bring you the latest, sometimes lesser-known local happenings.
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Folks on West 72nd Street are interested in forming a block association and looking for others to join in. If you’re interested in learning more and being part of the process reach out to Membership Committee Chair Eileen Vazquez at this email address.
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The UWS Coalition of Block Associations & Community Groups is hosting its June forum on Wednesday evening. Guests from the NYS Office of Cannabis Management will speak about the program that will lead to the upcoming cannabis retailing on the Upper West Side and throughout the state.
Topic: Weed on the Upper West Side: Cannabis Retailing Is Coming!
Guests: Pascale Bernard, the Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs; and Philip Rumsey, Manager of Intergovernmental Outreach, NYS Office of Cannabis Management
Date & Time: Wednesday, June 22, 6:30 PM
Submit Questions: If UWS residents wish to submit a question in advance, the email address is upperwestsidecoalition@gmail.com. We will also include questions posed in the YouTube chat.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUZRynIBn3E (advance registration not required)
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The Riverside Park goats are coming back on June 29th and Riverside Park Conservancy is offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a volunteer goat herder or a member of the goat patrol. The final day to sign up is Tuesday, June 21st. Fill out this Goat Patrol & Herding survey if you are interested. It contains the requirements for each position and serves as your RSVP. For more information refer to our earlier article here.
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Enjoy the Holiday — and don’t miss Peggy Taylor’s personal Juneteenth story. It portrays the holiday in a way not seen before. Or Meg A. Parsont’s lovely photographic essay about what’s blooming in UWS community gardens, as the summer solstice arrives in the Northern Hemisphere at 5:13 AM, Tuesday, June 21st.
No one seems to consider the many people who don’t want to smell or inhale weed smoke on the street or have it blow into our apartments.
We have all been subject to the smell of cigarettes and vaping for decades, in the air and getting on our clothes, etc. Why, all of a sudden – with pot – is this now a huge concern? I personally find the smell FAR more pleasant than the carbon monoxide from tobacco. Pot is legal. Get over it.
I think many people do consider that which is why they are holding a forum Sue!
I agree. I find the smell stomach-turning, nauseating. People smoking on the sidewalks and street corners stink the air and the smell makes me gag. It pollutes my clothes when I walk by.
It stinks the beautiful New York City air.
Close your windows
Many people do not realize that marijuana is actual natural medicine that people need to live a normal life.
Most that are so anti weed have never tried it themselves and rely on outdated movies for information.
“Natural medicine”? What is that supposed to even mean? Nature gave us heroin, cocaine, meth and morphine too. Many “natural” medicines, contrary to what you may think, are not without serious side effects and serious safety concerns. Smoking pot increases the chance of developing psychosis 5x secondary to an AKT1 gene variation. Stop trying to convince yourself that it’s safe – it’s not.
Let’s stop with the hyperbole and paranoia. Marijuana (THC) has never been implicated in a single death, unless the pot was tainted with something else. Yet tobacco kills ~500,000 people per year in the U.S. ALONE, and another ~100,000 die from alcohol-related deaths (NOT including car accidents).
Second, neither tobacco nor alcohol has any medical uses. Marijuana (THC) has several medical uses, including easing the pressure of glaucoma, easing the nausea associated with chemo- and radiation-therapy, and stimulating the appetite in people taking HIV medications. And there is now increasing evidence that, after a brief, non-dangerous spike, THC actually lowers blood pressure and heart rate, so it may soon become an important therapy for people with heart disease – which is the #1 killer in the U.S.
Yes, any foreign substance in the lungs COULD be dangerous, as could any chemical in the brain. But after 60+ years of both scientific and anecdotal evidence, the benefits of THC, and its overall safety, FAR outweigh the adverse.
Oh no- not psychosis 5x secondary to an AKT1 gene variation. The Horror.
Yeah, that just means that if you happen to have a variation in the gene AKT1, then you have an increased chance of cannabis-induced psychosis. Maybe even 5 times as great. But of course put that in context; if you happen to have this rare genetic variation, then according to those numbers you go from having a 0.00061% chance of cannabis induced psychosis to a 0.00305% chance. Five times as great, but… still a very small number.
Is cannabis perfectly safe? No. Neither are hamburgers. And have you SEEN Broadway lately? Taking your life in your hands crossing that. Better just stay inside and eat kale.
Thank you for helping to make my point – anything that alters the brain has a negative outcome for some percentage of the population.
Regular cannabis use and psychosis is associated in the general population and cannabis users are over-represented among new cases.
“Although the general population in the United States increasingly perceives cannabis to be a harmless substance, empirical evidence shows that cannabis use is associated both with CUD and comorbid psychiatric illness.”
See, Hasin D, Walsh C. Cannabis Use, Cannabis Use Disorder, and Comorbid Psychiatric Illness: A Narrative Review. J Clin Med. 2020;10(1):15. Published 2020 Dec 23. doi:10.3390/jcm10010015
Anyone who reads the news has seen studies showing that literally everything is dangerous — from red meat to white meat to red wine to… literally everything. Literally anything can kill you.
But reasonable people don’t hide in their apartments surviving only on kale. They consider not just the existence of a risk, but the magnitude of that risk. And your point is simply “OMG there is a risk,” while the rest of us are pointing out that it’s very, very, very, very, very small. You’d be better cutting out hamburgers.
I’d agree with you, but then we both would be wrong. An obvious logical fallacy is…well… obvious.
Attempting to equivocate two different issues does not change the facts.
Yes, the 17-year-olds puffing on the stoops at 8am are all resolving complex healthcare issues and preparing for normal life.
Sue I fixed your comment:
No one seems to consider the many people who don’t want to smell or inhale CIGARETTE smoke on the street or have it blow into our apartments.
The facts – weed smoke doesn’t “stick” to anything & second hand exposure doesn’t harm others (unlike with cigarettes). Simply not liking the smell of it isn’t reason to ban it. I hate the smell of my neighbors cooking, but I deal with it because it doesn’t actually hurt me. I think your anger needs to focus on the things that actually cause others harm. I won’t even get into alcohol which has a WAY more harmful effect than weed ever will.
According to the CDC, secondhand marijuana smoke can be just as, if not more, dangerous than tobacco smoke. The smoke can also have psychoactive effects. The NIH acknowledges the same, but also mentions the need for more research. Sticking to the facts, not opinions.
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https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/second-hand-smoke.html
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https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-are-effects-secondhand-exposure-to-marijuana-smoke
I disagree. I don’t like the smell of weed and I don’t want it stinking up my clothes when I walk past a person the sidewalk blowing the smoke into the air., and I certainly don’t want to breathe it in because the smell makes me gag and turns my stomach. I’m not against people using weed. It serves a good purpose for some people. Just do it privately so others don’t have to deal with it.
reference, please
Does anyone else live in a brownstone and deal with the pot smoking teenage punks on their steps? Disgusting. Can’t wait for it to get worse
You all voted for this. You bought the ticket, you take the ride
Do you know what time the Goat Herding event will be? I haven’t seen it noted anywhere.
Now that’s public weed consumption I can get behind!
It seems like there should be a limit as to how many of those places can open in any one neighborhood.
Supply and demand. I don’t like it either but if they can sell enough of the stuff to pay the bills, they are going to survive. It is pretty simple. You can’t regulate how many of a type of business can open in a neighborhood.
When an alcoholic neighbor drinks, he doesn’t force everyone around him to drink a shot of what he’s drinking.
Pot smokers force everyone around them to breathe in drugs along with them. And pot smoke is much stronger than it used to be.
What about 2nd hand drug smoke – medication interactions? Or the impact dramatically-increased smoke will have on people with respiratory problems. (This should have been a priority consideration post-COVID).
Where is the strong advocacy group for people who don’t want drugs imposed on them or their children?
NYC is known for vigorous debate about practically everything – so why has there been so little about this issue?
This debate has been going on since the 60’s, it has been hammered into the ground.
I loathe the smell of pot, too, but I’m guessing many many of the posters here were around before most public smoking of cigarettes was banned and didn’t complain constantly about it. It’s only been twenty years since you could light up in a bar! It’s peculiar how weed has this distinctive stigma. Well, not really.
@Anna – In addition to the damages alcoholics inflict on their own family and physical body, drinking and driving continues to kill and injure innocent people on American highways.
https://troopers.ny.gov/impaired-driving
We don’t yet know how legal weed affects driving (illegal DUI) while impaired.
I hope you live in a smoke free environment. “I like beer, don’t you?”
If you don’t like the pot shops just try to remember all the illegal drug deals that aren’t happening because of them. And also that delta 8, CBD, kratom and most of the stuff they sell is legal.
I’ve only used marijuana a handful of times in my long life but, oddly, I love the smell of it secondhand. So I enjoy catching a whiff as I walk the streets. Conversely, I hate the smell of tobacco cigarette smoke and am happy that has declined significantly over the past decade.
Different strokes for different folks. I’m not saying everyone should smoke pot on the streets – I’m just saying that I enjoy the smell, a minority opinion here.
You sound just like me.