For years now, New Yorkers have been told to pretend not to notice.
Not the clouds of smoke hanging over playgrounds.
Not the skunky haze drifting through sidewalks, parks, stoops, subway entrances, and open car windows.
Not the fact that what was sold as “responsible legalization” quickly became public, unavoidable saturation.
Everyone was supposed to smile, shrug, and call it progress.
This week, one city finally broke ranks.
Glen Cove, Long Island — hardly a hotbed of reactionary politics — became the first municipality in New York State to say out loud what millions of residents have been thinking quietly: there is a time and a place for weed, and the middle of public life isn’t it.
Their new ordinance bans public marijuana smoking. Period.
Not possession.
Not private use.
Not medical access.
Just public smoking — the kind that turns sidewalks into hotboxes and parks into open-air dispensaries whether you consent or not.
And suddenly, the pearl-clutching began.
You’d think Glen Cove had outlawed personal freedom itself.
But here’s the inconvenient truth: legalization was never supposed to mean compulsory exposure. You can drink legally in New York, too — but you can’t crack a beer on a playground bench or stumble through a public park with an open bottle. Society decided long ago that some behaviors belong behind closed doors, not in shared civic space.
Marijuana’s defenders love to argue it’s “just like alcohol.”
Fine. Then treat it the same way.
What Glen Cove did wasn’t radical. It was adult.
A modest fine. Clear rules. No criminalization.
Just a boundary.
And boundaries, it turns out, are what New York has been allergic to for a decade.
We legalized before we regulated.
We celebrated before we thought.
We told parents, commuters, and neighbors that if they didn’t like the smell — the constant, unavoidable smell — that was their problem.
Glen Cove said otherwise.
It said public space belongs to everyone — not just the loudest, smokiest minority willing to impose their habits on the rest of us. It said quality of life matters. It said children shouldn’t have to walk through clouds of weed on their way to a swing set. It said “freedom” doesn’t mean forcing your choices into other people’s lungs.
That shouldn’t be controversial.
But in New York, sanity now passes for courage.
The real question isn’t whether Glen Cove went too far.
It’s how long the rest of the state will keep pretending not to smell what’s right in front of us.
— The Valley Viewpoint
The Valley Viewpoint 