Yesterday afternoon, minding my own business, I was victimized by the New York State Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act of 2021.
Here’s how it went down: I was walking south along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, on the Central Park side, and I lit up a cigar. At a certain point, I crossed into the park itself, barely 10 yards from the wall that separates the Fifth Avenue sidewalk from the tree-lined border, and I sat on a bench to use my phone.
THE RACE IS ON: WHO COULD REPLACE MCCARTHY AS SPEAKER?
Full disclosure: I am aware that it is illegal to smoke in Central Park. I thought I might get away with it, briefly, because I was so close to Fifth Avenue, where it is legal to smoke, even though people give you dirty looks when you do it. Yesterday, though, a few people were sitting some distance away from me, and they gave me more than dirty looks.
“There’s no smoking in the park!” they shouted at me. One of them, for emphasis, inserted a colorful Anglo-Saxon modifier between the words “no” and “smoking” and “the” and “park.”
I pointed with my cigar hand to another group of young gentlemen nearby who seemed to be convening a meeting of the Bob Marley Appreciation Society. They were wreathed in oily, resinous blue smoke. Great clouds of nasty, skunk-smelling marijuana drifted along in the October breeze. Even from 30 or 40 yards away, it was clear they were smoking the good stuff.
What about them? My gesture seemed to ask.
“That’s not…
