According to Yuseff Hamm, president of the NYPD Guardians Association,a black officers' fraternal group, pot arrests are inherently unfair because black and brown pot users often don't have backyards to smoke a joint in.
This year it was revealed that the United States plans to give Tashkent 328 military vehicles worth nearly $350m, a move clearly intended to buy goodwill in a country strategically placed next to Afghanistan and in Russia's and China's backyards.
Away from public parks, the issue grows even murkier: what about sidewalks, schoolyards, backyards, and private rooftops?
In the Delta town of Rome (population: not listed on the census website; churches: four), homes are modest, sometimes tumbledown, cars rust in backyards and the steadiest jobs are at a nearby jail.Materially, life is easier than it was.
As backyards are, this was a useful dumping ground.
It will make readers realise that, to people living with soot and kitchen ranges and communal backyards, modernity was a godsend the new housing estates, the new comprehensive schools, even the motorway service stations, not bleak and ugly as they seem now, but clean and warm with indoor lavatories.
The middle classes were getting their own pools in their backyards and attendance at public baths was falling.
The new strategy often means the farmers are crammed into apartments with no backyards to raise chickens or store tools, and they face a longer journey to their fields.Though officially sanctioned, the dipiao markets are viewed warily by the central leadership.
Rather, it envisages them largely as urban boosters who will entice business and provide a counterweight to local busybodies who want nothing built in their backyards.
"We simply can't drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain's backyards, including the ones he can't even remember," he roared.John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, bantered about Mr McCain's flip-flops on tax cuts and immigration.
Moreover, these emerging markets are likely to shake things up not only in their own backyards but in rich countries too.
