New York Is Cracking Down on Synthetic Weed

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Often known as K2 or Spice, synthetic cannabinoids have been ravaging New York’s most vulnerable citizens for a while now. The state just launched a TV ad campaign to dissuade people from smoking the foul stuff, and on Tuesday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a flurry of legislation targeting K2 sellers with jail time and fines, asNewsdayreports.

“If you manufacture K2, if you possess K2 with the intent to sell it, or if you sell K2, ” de Blasio said, “you are now going to come up against the greatest police force in the world.”

State law already banned many iterations of the drug, but manufacturers have been able to persist in part by tweaking their chemical formulas and hawking their wares via local bodegas. As a local ABC affiliate reports, the new laws criminalise the manufacture, possession with intent to sell, and actual sale, and unleash new enforcement mechanisms – like public nuisance regulations – to make it easier for cops to go after the drug.

The newly-signed legislation will go into effect in mid-December, which presumably means we’ll have a downturn in naked Subway store terrors just in time for the holidays.

Thumbnail photo by Edwin Torres