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Ever since recreational marijuana use became legal in New York State almost five years ago, the funky stench of pot seems to be almost everywhere. It feels like you can’t walk more than a block before your nostrils are hit with the pungent aroma that reminds you of that Grateful Dead concert or wild dorm party you went to when you were in college, and then it makes you wonder: did it always smell that bad? And then you start to ponder if you can go anywhere now without that smell hounding you all day.
Glen Cove Mayor Pamela Panzenbeck decided to do something about the skunky odor before it became a pervasive problem in her hamlet. On Tuesday, the Glen Cove city council voted unanimously to become the first municipality in Nassau County to ban marijuana consumption in public spaces, effective January 1st, when violators will be hit with a $100 fine the first time. She appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain why she chose the policy that bans the use of weed in the open.
Mayor Pam, as she likes to be called, told host Larry Mendte that she simply listened to Glen Cove residents and understands why people still have a negative association with marijuana despite its legalization in recent years: “I’m not a hero. I’m just an ordinary human being that responded to the cries of the residents… People call several times a week, they call the police department and say, ‘People are smoking marijuana,’ and we’ve really had to say there really isn’t much we can do because marijuana is legal.”
Panzenbeck defended the ban as being anything but a money grab for Glen Cove’s town coffers; in fact, she says it has a lot of support in town: “The pot smokers compare it to cigarette smoke. Cigarette smoke wafts past you; marijuana smoke forms a cloud that hangs over your area for quite some time, and that’s what people find so offensive, but I had no idea as to the positive response that I would get from everywhere.”
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