“It’s like a cancer,” said WWL’s Newell Normand this week about street vendors in New Orleans’ French Quarter. “We end up seeing drugs, we end up seeing rotgut liquor.”
He said that Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration announced that it would ticket and arrest vendors with no permit that are selling their wares in the city, including on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras.
“In fact, municipal court officials are issuing orders to unpermitted vendors instructing them to keep their wares from – shots to marijuana products to trinkets – out of the French Quarter or face up to five months in jail,” said the former sheriff.
While he acknowledged that the vendors and their supporters argue that the laissez-faire approach to the street vendors is part of New Orleans’ unique culture, Normand said he doesn’t agree.
“No, New Orleans is not different,” he said. “We have a government, we have a set of rules and ordinances. If we don’t want to have those rules and ordinances, then take them off the books. But that is our expression of what we desire as the citizenry of the city of New Orleans, that we’re not going to put our local businesses at a disadvantage against anyone who thinks just because it works in their best interest to go sell their wares, their alcohol, or whatever it may be, it’s good for them.”
Listen here for more on why Newell thinks the street vendor situation needs to change.
