Since Justin, a 15-year-old college freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he’s been smoking almost every day, several times a day, he said.
“If I smoke a blunt, I’ll be chill after that blunt,” he said one morning recently at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to worry about anything at all.”
Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flowers. Across the street, more students were smoking in a doorway and on a sidewalk. On another corner, about half an hour before the first bell, a smoke shop opened and kids came in backpacks and uniforms.
While it has long been common practice for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.
There is little definitive data on marijuana use among children and the available information can sometimes paint a contradictory picture. Disciplinary data from the city education department reflects a 10 percent increase in alcohol and drug-related crimes this year compared to 2019. But a city survey found that teen cannabis use had declined by 2021, the same year the state legalized marijuana for recreational use use, to the lowest level recorded since the question was added to the survey in 1997.
Still, two dozen students and teachers at the city’s public, private and charter schools said in interviews that some classrooms were confused as more students showed up late and high.
They said that with the proliferation of unlicensed smoke shops and the availability of vape pens and edibles, cannabis has never been more accessible and unobtrusive. They told stories of students pulling out vaping pens when teachers turned their backs, of bathrooms and stairwells becoming smoking lounges, and of the smell of weed wafting through the school hallways.
Teachers in the city’s high schools said it was rare to catch students smoking, given the increasing convenience, forcing reports to be made based on more opaque judgments about the smell and behavior of the students.
“It really feels like an unstoppable wave that we’re trying in vain to quell,” says America Billy, 44, who has taught at a public high school in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, for more than a decade. She said it was difficult to know if a student was out of action due to lack of sleep, family stress or drugs.
In December, former principal, April McKoy, wrote in a letter describing how student cannabis use had spiraled out of control during her last two years as head of the City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology in Brooklyn.
“It felt like more and more students were using without knowing the source, impact or consequences of early marijuana use,” Ms McKoy said in the letter, adding that students had returned after the pandemic “sad, isolated and looking for ways to cope to go .”
Freshmen sold cannabis to each other, and she said she witnessed a smoke shop selling edibles to 14-year-olds with police officers nearby. On another occasion, she sent four students to the hospital because they were sick from contaminated edibles, she said.
The proliferation of unlicensed smoke shops, which the city says could number as many as 1,500, could be one of the factors driving marijuana use among children, officials said.
Gale Brewer, a city councilman, said that while she counted fewer than 10 in her district on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in September, there were 64 in March. Several school administrators have complained to her about merchants selling joints and infused candies, as well as potent concentrates and vapes, to students.
“We all said we need social workers, we need psychologists, we need mental health in schools,” she said. But dealing with smoke shops that sell to children “wasn’t on the list.”
Mayor Eric Adams has vowed to crack down on unlicensed smoke shops, though he has taken no drastic action. In February, his government filed nuisance lawsuits against a handful of stores where police said underage deputies could buy marijuana. At the same time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent letters to stores threatening to evict them, but so far his office has not initiated any proceedings.
In Albany, state lawmakers passed budget legislation in April that expanded the powers of state cannabis regulators and tax authorities to close unlicensed stores and impose hefty fines for illegal sales. Mr Adams’ office praised the measure but urged the state to give the city additional enforcement powers to curb illegal smoke shops.
Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the education department, said schools offer a range of programs aimed at addressing and preventing substance abuse among students, including specialists who provide counseling in schools. But last year there were just 280 specialists for the city’s 1,600 schools, Chalkbeat reports.
Esther Lelievre, a cannabis activist who conducts educational workshops in community center schools, said many of the students who use cannabis said they started vaping nicotine, a phenomenon that was on the rise before the pandemic. Few of the students she has worked with got their marijuana from smoke shops, she said. Most got it from friends who had access to a dealer or cannabis at home.
At the Bronx Documentary Center, a non-profit photo gallery near Justin’s school, students from the journalism program have been trying to raise awareness of cannabis use among children after witnessing the change in their peers.
They mapped all the smoke shops and schools in the area with thumbtacks and connected the closest ones with rubber bands. Cara-Star Tyner, 15, showed the chart at a recent evening class and noticed that one of the rubber bands isn’t stretching.
“It’s that close,” she said.
One of the stores, 1 Puff Puff Pass, was visible through their office window. On a recent morning, The Times saw two teenagers in backpacks and uniforms make a purchase at the store and later enter a high school building. Two days later, a man who identified himself as the store’s owner, Mike Alramada, 35, said he did not sell tobacco or marijuana to students. As he spoke, he was interrupted by teenagers ringing the bell to let him into the store, which also stocked some drinks and other groceries.
The journalism students said they were disappointed in the adults who ran their schools, their town and the smoke shops, and they hoped that raising the issue would finally spur the authorities into action.
“I hope adults realize they’re not doing their job,” said Alexa Pacheco, who attends a Catholic school in the Bronx. “A teenager doesn’t have to worry about his friends taking drugs.”
Lauren McCarthy reporting contributed.