[caption id="attachment_8323" align="alignright" width="199"] Melissa Mark-Viverito[/caption] Just days ago, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio overhauled the city’s marijuana policy by instructing law enforcement officers to issue tickets for marijuana possession instead of arresting offenders. Now, the City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is going a step further and calling for making the substance legal. “It’s not something we can just do randomly, but with a thought process, and looking…

[caption id="attachment_8305" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo of Bill Bratton and Bill de Blasio by Spencer Platt/Getty Images[/caption] The New York Police Department will stop arresting people for the possession of small amounts of marijuana and instead issue civil citations, city officials stated Monday, citing both a severe racial disparity in the law’s implementation and the burden of arrests on the criminal justice system as reasons for the change. With the implementation of this new…

More than 80 percent of the people arrested for the possession of marijuana during the first eight months of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration were people of color, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. [caption id="attachment_8292" align="alignright" width="300"] Credit: Photo Posted By Occupy Wall Street's Twitter Account[/caption] During de Blasio’s run for mayor last year, he vowed to direct the NYPD to reduce the number of marijuana arrests citywide. However, between the months of January…