Are New York’s Drug Laws Working?

While doing research on the job, I came upon an article in San Francisco publication reporting, based on federal survey data, that the City by the Bay had the highest rate of illicit drug use in the United States. Naturally, this made me curious about New York City, so I followed the link back to the source and found out the following. About 8.13% of Americans had used an illicit drug including marijuana in the past month, compared with 9.16% in New York State, 9.13% in New York City, and 13.4% in Manhattan. New York treats those possessing small amounts of marijuana relatively gently. New York is also the home of the infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws. While 3.64% of all Americans had used an illicit drug other than marijuana in the past month, just 3.15% of New York State residents and 3.13% of New York City residents (but 4.04% of Manhattan residents) had. I’m not an expert on drug use and criminal justice, but does this mean we sort of got what we wanted? That is smoke pot if you must (but in NYC not tobacco) but don’t do something worse? And are the Rockefeller Drug Laws filling the jails with affluent people from Manhattan? Find the detailed data, which also shows very low hard drug use in Queens and has details for sub-state areas upstate, here.