Adams should keep focus on public safety and business —not marijuana, video gamers
New York Post
March 13, 2022
Marijuana rooftop growth
Contrary to our previous mayor, New York is not a tale of two cities. Rich or poor, black or white, Asian or Hispanic — all are united against skyrocketing violent crime. The city is shaping up to be a tale of two mayors.
The future depends on which Eric Adams emerges victorious: the one who knows he was elected to cram crime down and shore up the city’s major existing industries, from Wall Street to tourism, or the one who flits about talking about cannabis and video games.
Last week, both mayors were on display.
Thursday at the Hunts Point produce market in the southeast Bronx, Adams unveiled his “blueprint for New York City’s economic recovery.”
There’s good stuff there.
Adams wants to cut red tape for small businesses, launching a “one-stop shop” for permitting. Great — but mayor upon mayor has promised this in the past. We’ll see if he can deliver.
And he knows that the streets are a mess. “When we move through our city and see [homeless] encampments on the sidewalks, on highways, when our streets are not clean, it sends the wrong message,” the mayor said.
But Adams also spends time on distracting nonsense, at best — and, at worst, actual harm.
First, marijuana. “We’re going to have cannabis growth here in the city,” the mayor vowed. “Y’all know what that is.” Projecting $1.3 billion in annual pot sales, the city promises to help convicted drug dealers launch themselves into this legal drug-selling business, complete with free marketing and legal assistance.
It was one thing, a few years back, for the city and state to say that nobody should go to jail for having a few joints on him. And it’s fine to say that if marijuana is to be legal, what’s sold should be regulated and free of fentanyl and other more dangerous substances.
Adams’ economic recovery “blueprint” for the city includes plans for the growing marijuana industry
But it’s an entirely different thing to build an economic recovery around selling a mind-altering substance.
In the best-case scenario, selling marijuana should be just like selling any other low-margin, processed, regulated, farmed product. We all need to buy tomato paste. We don’t build our economy around it. In the worst-case scenario, we rope new people, including teens, into ingesting marijuana regularly, due to subsidized heavy marketing.
Second, and less harmful, Adams wants to “make New York City a leading hub for digital game development.”
It makes sense to woo video-game makers to New York. Producing a game is just like producing a combination of movie, advertisement and interactive tech app — all things New York’s creative industry excels at.
But this isn’t a huge industry. Nationwide, it employs about 300,000 people. If New York snagged 10% of those jobs, it wouldn’t even add 1% to city employment.
Adams is also pushing to bring digital gaming development to New York City. He needs to put his full attention on public safety instead of side projects
Plus, these are the same types of jobs — easily mobile and thus dependent on where talented, creative people want to be — that the city is already at risk of losing in other industries, such as Wall Street, advertising and tech.
With nobody trapped in a five-days-a-week commute to a desk nine hours a day, these jobs will go to where people want to be, whatever Adams says.
There’s nothing wrong with cheerleading; maybe the video gamers will appreciate the shoutout. But what does the city need to make the gamers and everyone else want to be here?
First, better commutes. Adams has no big project for better road or rail infrastructure.
No, he’s not in charge of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But might he have an idea how it might spend some of the city taxpayers’ money? The city could use faster bus service to knit neighborhoods not too far away from each other.
Second, public safety — which will lure tourists back, too. Adams knows this. “If New Yorkers do not feel safe on our subways, on our sidewalks and in our parks, then we cannot thrive,” he said Thursday.
Yes — but people want to see results soon. So far in 2022, the murder rate is about even with last year, more than 50% higher than before the pandemic. The mayor will deploy his new anti-crime police units this week — and the public will expect fast results or a pointed turn by Adams against the governor and the state Legislature for holding up fixes to the free-with-no-bail laws.
If things get better soon, the public will tolerate Adams’ cannabis and video-game initiatives. But marijuana and games can’t save us from the problems with the basics, upon which the mayor won election.
1 comment:
I think that just about says enough about what NYC leaders' priorities are.
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