NYC NOW - November 24, 2023 : Midday News

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

New Jersey's Supreme Court will allow police to keep using questionable methods to determine if someone is driving while high. WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Jelani Gibson, writer for "NJ Cannabis Insider,” to discuss how those determinations can be used. Plus, WNYC’s Arun Venugopal looks into a new play at the Public Theatre, called “Manahatta.”

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. Happy Friday. We're headed into the busiest travel weekend of the year, making our way back home from wherever we spent the holiday. And that means there'll be a lot of cars on the road.

And not everyone will be sober. In New Jersey, the state Supreme Court has decided it will allow police to keep using disputed, scientifically questionable methods to determine if someone is driving, while high. But the court is also placing limits on how those determinations can be used. WNYC's Michael Hill talked with Jalani Gibson, writer for NJ Cannabis Insider. That conversation after the break. Just give us a little bit of a background here. What's the issue around driving while high and are those and how are those determinations made differently than say alcohol-related driving under the influence arrest? So basically, just to sum it up in short manner and format, the cannabis legalization that has happened throughout the country and the cannabis legalization that has happened in New Jersey and New York, what happens is one of the first public safety concerns that come up is whether or not there's going to be an increase in traffic fatalities due to drug-impaired driving.

Now, the data on that varies. In some states, you will see an increase. In other states, you will see a decrease. And in other states, the traffic fatalities will stay relatively unchanged. But what the cannabis legalization legislation has been doing is it has been allocating more money to these drug recognition experts to increase their ranks. Now, in New Jersey, you have the second highest amount of drug recognition experts in the country. And New York also has the third. California has the highest amount of drug recognition experts, which is where the protocol originated.

And so now the debate is around whether or not those methods are scientifically valid and whether or not as a result it is leading to unjust arrest. And that is what the concerns of the civil rights advocates are. Jelani, I have to ask, how does someone who is a drug recognition expert? What does that mean? How does that person determine that someone is driving high? And so basically it's roughly a 12-step process. And they'll do a couple of tests that you may be familiar with when it comes to alcohol. They'll have you stand on one leg.

They'll put their fingers out and you'll have to follow their fingers. But another part of the process, which is very important here, is they will actually interview and interrogate you as to whether or not you have taken any drugs. And that's where the most controversy here is, is because a lot of public defenders and civil rights activists are saying that the majority of, of the admissions and positivity rates come from that part of the process during the interrogation process and that everything else that led up to it was essentially confirmation bias. What the prosecutor will argue is that it's harder to catch impaired drivers if you get rid of the drug recognition experts. And then what the counter argument to that is, is the civil rights and public defender

people will say you can use dashboard cameras and other things to prove impaired. driving. And so it's a lot of back and forth. So how are drug or DRE recognition experts? How are they trained? Yeah. And so that was one of the largest aspects of the trial. And basically, the conclusion that was come to was that since they were trained in a way that was similar to medical technicians, their evidence should be essentially allowed to come into court. And what the counterarguments that was is that it doesn't matter how rigorously trained someone is if they are rigorously trained on mathematically questionable methods. What are the consequences of this ruling? And what has the court determined in terms of limits that's saying, okay, we're going to allow this kind of method,

but there are limits here. What are the specific limits? And so some of the limits are the state has to make a good faith effort to obtain a toxicology report. It was also suggested that you have to give jury's instructions on the limitations of drug recognition experts. And it was also implied that drug recognition experts couldn't flat out come and say that something was caused by drugs. They can only essentially tell someone that your behavior is consistent with someone who had ingested drugs. And so those were some of the caveats and limitations that were put on it.

And the dissenting justices essentially dissented along the lines of saying those caveats and limitations weren't enough because it doesn't matter how many guardrails you put around something that is not mathematically correct. Chalani, for the record, there's nothing that's being used right now that someone who suspected of being high can blow into to determine a level of highness or how much marijuana are they taken or anything like that. as you would with alcohol. Well, there are a couple of technologies that are in the works, but I think that what people have to parse out here is that there is a difference between drug use, drug impairment, and how much drug impairment is too much impairment to operate a motor vehicle and what exactly is the safe level or threshold as it relates to cannabis in particular or any other particular drug.

And so there's a difference between saying you have recently used cannabis versus saying, you have recently used cannabis and the amount of cannabis you have in your system has passed a threshold at which you are able to operate a motor vehicle safely. Jolani Gibson covers issues pertaining to marijuana in the Garden State for NJ Cannabis Insider on NJ.com and in the Star Legend. Jolani, thank you so much for your time. No problem. That's Jelani Gibson, writer for NJ Cannabis Insider, talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Back in New York City, a new play at the public theater brings light to the story of the city's Lenape people. WNYC's Arun Venigal Paul has more on Manahata.

Mary Catherine Nagel is a playwright and attorney, and years ago she realized that most New Yorkers know next to nothing about the city's Native American history, nor the fact that Manhattan, Manahata, is a Lenape word. There's like a square mile in Queens where more languages are spoken that square mile than anywhere else on Earth. She's really interesting, right? But where is Lanapé still spoken? Nagel is Cherokee. Her play, Manahata, emerged from this realization. It has Native American characters, Native American actors, and a few actual lines of Lenape. There's even a Lenape cultural advisor, Joe Baker, of the Lenape Center, whose life's

mission has been to make the public aware of Lenape history. It's something that has been noticeably. and with intent, erased from the public consciousness of the citizens of New York City and beyond. The play pivots between two eras. The 17th century, when Dutch settlers first meet, then start killing the Lenape on Manhattan Island. And the 21st century, when an ambitious Lenape woman by the name of Jane Snake climbs the ranks of a Wall Street firm in the midst of the subprime mortgage crisis. It's a play about dispossession, past and... present. But it's not all gloom and doom. There are jokes, too, like this one, which I asked

Nagel to repeat for me. Do you know why Indians can't drink tea? Now why? If we drink too much tea, we will drown in our own TP. Humor and entertainment in general serve a higher purpose for Nagel. Because historically, arts entertainment have been used to dehumanize us. And so I'm hoping to use arts and entertainment to re-humanize us. Manahatta is part of a cultural wave, bringing Native American stories to public attention. The Thanksgiving play by Larissa Fast Horse opened on Broadway earlier this year. The TV series Reservation Dogs was named one of the best shows on television. And Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which journeys into the Osage murders of the 1920s, is being hyped as an Oscar favorite. For Joe Baker of the Lenape Center, all of this has been

deeply affirming. As a child in Oklahoma, his great-grandparents shared their own family tales with him. They were uneasy stories. His family land, he discovered, had been illegally seized by white entrepreneurs and oil companies. In the process, his grandmother was poisoned and his uncle murdered. Today, Baker is 77 and says he thinks the work of Native American storytellers is beginning to bear fruit. I know when we started this work at Llanapi Center, 14. years ago, it was rare to hear Lanopi mentioned. That's not true today. Baker is especially encouraged by young people, who he said no longer by the standard

narrative of the city and the nation. They're asking hard questions. They're asking what happened. Manajata is on at the public theater until December 23rd. That's WNYC's Arun Venegal Pub. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Quick shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutich, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz,

Jene Pierre, and Wayne Schoemeister with help from the entire WNYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. I'm Jared Marcel. Have a great weekend.