Seattle, WA: Proponents of a citywide initiative to minimize the amount of time local police spend enforcing marijuana possession laws announced last week that county election officials have certified their proposal for the November 2003 electoral ballot. If passed, Initiative 75 would require the Seattle Police Department and the City Attorney’s Office to make the “investigation, arrest and prosecution” of adults for pot possession the city’s “lowest law enforcement priority.”
Initiative sponsors, the Sensible Seattle Coalition, maintain that passage of I-75 would save money and allow law enforcement to focus on more serious crimes. Currently, 42 percent of all state drug arrests are for marijuana offenses. Of those, more than 90 percent are charged with marijuana possession only. Under state law, possession of as little as one gram of marijuana is criminally punishable by 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Similar marijuana “deprioritization” laws have passed in other metropolitan areas, including San Francisco and Oakland. Local initiative efforts to decriminalize pot possession have previously been successful in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin, among other places.
For more information, please contact Keith Stroup, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-8751. Text of Initiative 75 is available online at: http://www.sensibleseattle.org A summary of national and local marijuana-law initiatives is available online at: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5426