One of the most sensitive questions Mayor Adams is asked during his first 100 days interview with the Sun is about masks. The way it is put is this: If vaccines are never approved for youngsters  under the age of 5, should they wear masks forever?

His Honor says “the decision on masks on 2- to 4-years-olds is not attached to vaccines.” He also asserts that he intended to take away the mandate this Monday but that “health professionals looked at the new variant” and asked to “first see how this plays out. And then we can come and remove the mask for 2 to 4 years.”

Mr. Adams indicates he is “deferring” to the doctors, insisting that he is “more aggressive than any parent.”

“Trust me,” the mayor said. “You know, I drive my doctors crazy. I’m extremely aggressive. I want masks off our children, but I don’t want to do it in a manner that is going to be harmful in any way.”

Given that it’s not tied to vaccines, why is the age bracket of between 2 years and 4 years the only group required to mask in the first place? The mayor sidesteps, insisting that his goal is consistency for parents. “I know what it is to be a parent. I had a young child. So I know certainty and clarity is the key. We don’t wanna be on a merry-go-round with this issue.”

The mayor maintains that vaccine exemptions for athletes and musicians, while others are losing their jobs, are based on fairness. He is referring to a rule that exempted from the vaccine requirement performers who were in town temporarily. It was unfair, he argued, to performers who live and pay taxes in New York and did have a vaccine requirement. 

“The rule was unfair from the beginning … because it enabled performers that moved outta New York and don’t pay taxes, to come here and perform without a vaccine.”

The mayor says that he felt unable to address the unfairness in January, because the Covid numbers were “too high.”  He says he revisited the matter later with the idea to “make sure those performers were not being penalized unfairly.”

Meanwhile, he maintained the vaccine mandate for employees and credited it with the city’s ability to open. 

“Because of those mandates,” Mr. Adams says, “we’re in the place that we are right now. Our city’s not shut down again. We’re not seeing the high number of deaths. We’re not seeing the oversaturation of our hospitals. We made the right smart decisions, and I’m really proud of New Yorkers. And I’m proud of those who answered the call to take the vaccine booster shots, to keep our city up and to operate it.”

The mayor also discusses the legalized marijuana industry and the legality of requiring people to have a certain gender, skin tone, or income in order to win a permit to operate in the legal marijuana industry. Is he concerned that with respect to granting marijuana licenses, favoring persons who broke the law in the past conflicts with a tough stance on crime? Mr. Adams, who has supported these policies, described the effort as a form of reparation. 

“When I testified in Floyd v. NYPD on how we applied the law, we found that African Americans, Hispanics, and whites used marijuana at the same level, yet we were arresting African Americans and Latinos at a disproportionate rate.… And I commend the state lawmakers that witness that we’ve hurt people by how we apply the law. And we need to make them whole again. That was the right thing to do. And it does not in any way indicate that I don’t believe we need to follow the basic laws in this city. But I know what happened back then.”