The city’s top cop said Sunday that the NYPD knows legal weed isn’t far off for the Big Apple — but he’s concerned about how the drug might affect drivers.
“The NYPD knows itâs coming,” NYPD Commissioner James OâNeill told radio host John Catsimatidis on his morning AM 970 show The Cats Roundtable. “And a few of those things are, what are we going to do about the people that are under the age of 21?”
“And really what concerns me most is driving while ability-impaired due to marijuana, because thereâs no instantaneous test for that,” he added. “So as we go through this, as we look forward, we’re just going to have to make sure that we do our best to keep everybody in the city safe. And we’re working with the mayor’s office, and some of the agencies out there I think will be able to do that.”
On Friday, OâNeill expressed a different concern â that weed legalization could force as many as a dozen dręĶug-sniffing NYPD pooches into early retirement.
The departmentâs 12 narcotics dogs are trained to alert their handlersðģ when snâĻiffing for illicit drugs including â for now â marijuana.
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday fęĶor the first time said he backs the legalization of recreational marijuana â but insisted he wonât allow it to be dominated by corporate interests.
His advocacy comes just days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he wants the state Legislature to make recðreational âąpot legal in New York in 2019.