This article in The New York Times (via Reason) paints a "sympathetic, lighthearted" picture of a beloved person in the community. So beloved that the New York Times runs his story and picture on its front page. A Legal Aid lawyer notes that the man is the "goodwill ambassador of Eighth Avenue" and that everyone says hello to him at his court appearances.
Now, you may have caught on from the last part of that sentence that not everything is on the up and up. In fact, the man - Lonnie Loosie - sells cigarettes on the street. He'll sell you one at a time, with discounts for multiple cigarettes. And he sells packs for $8 (which seems expensive, until you realize they go for $12.50/pack in NY). All this is fine and good. It's a nice story. Except that, as Reason.com notes, you would never see such a story about a guy selling marijuana or, god forbid, something stronger.
Yet the difference between the guy selling Mary Jane and old Loosie is... what exactly? Neither Loosie nor our hypothetical Janer salesman is legally able to hawk his wares. Neither drug drives people to crazy danger looking for a high. Neither is probably very good for you when used in the traditional way. Yet Loosie gets a front page story about how good a community person he is and how he is beloved and merely filling a need created by government policy.
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