During Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure New York City spent over a million police hours processing misdemeanor marijuana arrests due in large part to the controversial stop and frisk policy that targets minority communities. According to the findings of a new report by the Drug Policy Alliance, from 2002 to 2012 roughly 440,000 low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests were made.

Andrew Sullivan is still trying to defend his absurd claim that Obama somehow deserves credit for growing support for marijuana legalization. In fact, though, while the decades long trend towards greater support for marijuana legalization hasn’t stopped since Obama took office, it has continued despite the Obama Administration’s overt opposition.

The move is in response to increasing media scrutiny over the horrific way New York City has been enforcing “public possession” marijuana laws. The enforcement has been extremely racially biased, with almost all those arrest being black or Latino. Even worse, reporting by WNYC showed how the NYPD has been tricking people into showing their marijuana, violating people’s civil rights with illegal searches, and lying in official reports to claim the marijuana they found hidden on a person was in “public view,” so it would carry a higher penalty.

While opposition to marijuana prohibition has risen in recent years; yet under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration New York City has dramatically stepped up its marijuana arrests. The NYPD now spends a huge amount of police time and money arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses.

One of my first observations about the defeat of California’s Proposition 19 was how important turnout demographics were to the final outcome.

While I will need to wait for official final turnout numbers from the California Secretary of State to determine what impact Prop 19 had on youth turnout, it is clear from the available data that the initiative didn’t bring out young voters in the levels they normally do for presidential elections (as opposed to midterms).