Marijuana May Mean Ticket, Not Arrest, in New York City

The New York Police Department, which has been arresting tens of thousands of people a year for low-level marijuana possession, is poised to stop making such arrests and to issue tickets instead, according to law enforcement officials.

People found with small amounts of marijuana would be issued court summonses and be allowed to continue on their way without being handcuffed and taken to station houses for fingerprinting.

The change would remake the way the police in New York City handle the most common drug offenses and would represent Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most significant effort since taking office to address the enduring effects of the department’s excessive stop-and-frisk practices.

Curbing arrests for small-scale marijuana possession has become a cause for criminal justice reform advocates, and this year, the new Brooklyn district attorney, Kenneth P. Thompson, said he would stop prosecuting such cases. But his announcement did not go over well with Mr. de Blasio and his police commissioner, William J. Bratton, who vowed to continue making low-level marijuana arrests.

Now, the de Blasio administration is publicly embracing the notion that such small-scale possession merits different treatment. And with the changes, City Hall is moving to retake control of a politically potent issue that has enormous resonance in the black and Latino communities, where a vast majority of small-scale marijuana arrests have taken place.

In the first eight months of the year, blacks and Hispanics represented 86 percent of those arrested for marijuana possession in the city, according to a study written in part by Harry G. Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College who is a director of the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.

Many details of the changes planned by the de Blasio administration are still being discussed at City Hall, and many questions remain unanswered. Under the new policy, for example, will the 25 grams or less that constitutes misdemeanor possession under state law be the threshold below which a summons is issued? Will a lit marijuana cigarette be treated differently from a packet of unsmoked cannabis? Other key questions, such as the cost of the fines or whether a criminal record would typically result from a summons, may not be up to City Hall.