City officials cracked down Monday on the open-air weed market in Washington Square Park — after The Post reported over the weekend on how dealers had set up tables right next to vendors of legal products. Does the de Blasio team fix any quality-of-life horror without us pointing it out?
Officially at the Park Department’s request, cops are enforcing the law where they had gone along with the dealers’ appropriation of public space, brazenly but illegally selling pot from tables full of pre-rolled joints and jars of various strains.
Officers ignored the market for two reasons: 1) Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in March legalized adult recreational pot use. And 2) while the new law doesn’t go into effect until sometime next year, any weed-selling miscreants they arrest will be walking free in no time at all, thanks to New York’s shoddy criminal-justice “reforms.”
So no matter that the chair of the state Cannabis Control Board, Tremaine Wright, last week said no such sales are licensed, insisting, “This conduct is not legal and must stop.” As The Post reported Sunday, five separate vendors happily peddled their wares in broad daylight around the fountain across from the park’s famous arches, all while families and students milled about.
No, it’s not the park’s 1980s crack problem, but open drug sales sure don’t make the park a great place for children to hang out.
So much for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to set up the “right parameters” for Washington Square Park. What actually goes wrong in this town is plainly no concern of his, unless it makes the headlines.