“The status quo is not an option. The Council agrees that a well-regulated market … is a safer market.”
Tag: arrests
Now is not the time for the cannabis community to rest on the laurels of its past successes or to presume that someone else is going to finish the job.
The overwhelming majority of those arrested were charged with low-level marijuana possession — not cultivation, trafficking, or sales.
NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano called the Justice Department’s policy change “inappropriate and misguided. … Most Americans say that consuming cannabis should no longer be a crime; they certainly don’t want federal resources directed toward these misplaced priorities.”
“Marijuana-related prosecutions remain the primary driver of drug war enforcement in those states where cannabis remains criminalized, whereas, with few exceptions, marijuana-related arrests fall precipitously in jurisdictions that legalize and regulate the adult-use cannabis market.”
“Time and time again, local lawmakers in marijuana prohibition states are advancing these common sense decriminalization measures when state legislators refuse to take action. Minor marijuana possession offenders, many of them young people, should not be saddled with an arrest, a criminal record, and with the lifelong penalties and stigma associated with it.”
“While the total number of marijuana-related arrests have fallen nationwide in recent years, it is clear that marijuana-related prosecutions still remain a primary driver of drug war enforcement in the United States.”
The ordinance, which took immediate effect, amends county code so that the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana is reduced to a civil violation punishable by no more than a $150 fine.