Colorado has a measure on the ballot this year to legalize.


http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/eff....

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By David Klepper

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: 8:27 p.m. Sunday, June 10, 2012

Catharine Leach is married and has two boys, age 2 and 8. She has a good job with a federal contractor and smokes pot most every day. Like others across the nation working to relax penalties for possession of pot, she decided to stop hiding and speak out.

"I'm done being afraid," she said. "People in this country are finally coming around and seeing that putting someone in jail for this doesn't make sense. It's just a changing of the time."

Once consigned to the political fringe, marijuana policy is appearing on legislative agendas around the country thanks to an energized base of supporters and an increasingly open-minded public. Lawmakers from Rhode Island to Colorado are mulling medical marijuana programs, pot dispensaries, decriminalization and even legalization. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now authorize medical marijuana, and 14, including neighboring Connecticut and Massachusetts, have rolled back criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of pot.

Rhode Island is poised to become the 15th state to decriminalize marijuana possession. The state's General Assembly passed legislation last week that would eliminate the threat of big fines or even jail time for the possession of an ounce or less. Instead, adults caught with small amounts of marijuana would face a $150 civil fine. Police would confiscate the marijuana, but the incident would not appear on a person's criminal record.

Minors caught with pot would also have to complete a drug awareness program and community service. Gov. Lincoln Chafee has said he is inclined to sign the legislation. One of the bill's sponsors, state Rep. John Edwards of Tiverton, has introduced similar proposals in past years, but the idea always sputtered in committee. Each year, though, he got more co-sponsors, and the bill passed the House this year 50-24. The state Senate passed it 28-6. Some supporters of decriminalization say they'd like to go even further.

"America's 50-year war on drugs has been an abysmal failure," said Rep. John Savage, a retired school principal from East Providence. "Marijuana in this country should be legalized. It should be sold and taxed."

Opponents warned of dire consequences to the new policy.

"What kind of message are we sending to our youth? We are more worried about soda — for health reasons — than we are about marijuana," said one opponent, Rhode Island state Rep. John Carnevale a Democrat from Providence.

A survey by Rasmussen last month found that 56 percent of respondents favored legalizing and regulating marijuana. A national Gallup poll last year showed support for legalizing pot had reached 50 percent, up from 46 percent in 2010 and 25 percent in the mid-'90s.

http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/chi....

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By DON BABWIN
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:37 p.m. Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Published: 2:53 p.m. Wednesday, June 27, 2012

CHICAGO — Chicago's City Council on Wednesday passed an ordinance that allows police to ticket people found with small amounts of marijuana instead of arresting them, saying aldermen had to do something to keep officers on the street where they can combat the surging homicide rate and not be tied up for hours doing paperwork. The 43-3 vote in favor of the ordinance, which allows officers to write a ticket for $250 to $500 for possessing as much as 15 grams of marijuana or about 15 marijuana cigarettes, was expected after a council committee voted 13-1 last week to approve the measure.

But aldermen still debated about two hours before passing the ordinance, with many saying they were not comfortable with a measure that could be seen as sending a message that they are condoning drug use. Others said they needed to act to protect an increasingly nervous city where homicides are up 38 percent this year compared to the same period last year.

"The calls I get at 2 o'clock in the morning are not about marijuana possession, they're about someone who's been shot in my ward," Alderman Will Burns said before the council voted Wednesday. "I want those calls to cease and the way we do that is to make sure our police are fighting violent crime."

Alderman Edward Burke, a former police officer, said he was concerned about what the ordinance, which goes into effect Aug. 4, would say to the city's youth. However, he said he was more troubled by the fact that only 1,000 of the 20,603 people arrested for small amounts of marijuana in the city last year were white compared to 15,862 blacks.

"The system is broken but just as I don't want to send the wrong message to kids, I also don't want it to be the case (that African-Americans) are going to be 16 times more likely to get locked up in the city of Chicago than some kid" from predominantly white neighborhoods, Burke said.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who along with Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy came out in favor of the ordinance earlier this month, said the current law is actually sending a far more dangerous "message" to children.

"I cannot think of a thing that's more undermining to a message to a child than everybody knowing that 90 percent of the cases are thrown out," Emanuel told the council after the vote.

McCarthy said in a statement earlier this month that the arrests of more than 18,000 people for misdemeanor possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana "tied up more than 45,000 police hours" and that the "new ordinance nearly cuts that time in half ... freeing up cops to address more serious crime."

Other states are starting to relax their marijuana possession laws. This month alone, governors in Rhode Island and New York moved toward decriminalization of small amounts of the drug. Of the 8,625 misdemeanor marijuana cases between 2006 and 2010 in Cook County, about 87 percent were dismissed, according to statistics from the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court. In Chicago, the debate has been going on for several months. Alderman Danny Solis introduced a similar ordinance in November. He focused much of his argument then on his estimate that the tickets given for marijuana possession would bring in as much as $7 million a year in revenue to the financially strapped city.

Solis said Wednesday that such an ordinance would mean poor neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides would not have police officers go missing for hours at a time to do paperwork, as they do now when they arrest people for small amounts of marijuana. He said cutting the time that officers spend making those arrests adds up to 2,500 more "police days" that officers will be on the street.

"This ordinance is going to have a definite impact on the safety of our community," Solis said.

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"What kind of message are we sending to our youth? We are more worried about soda — for health reasons — than we are about marijuana,"

That deserves to become a meme.

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Chicago's City Council on Wednesday passed an ordinance that allows police to ticket people found with small amounts of marijuana instead of arresting them, saying aldermen had to do something to keep officers on the street where they can combat the surging homicide rate and not be tied up for hours doing paperwork.

not be tied up for hours doing paperwork.

I've been saying for years that MJ should be legal. In fact, every drug that can't be proven to make your homicidal should be legal.

If, and I don't agree with it, but if you want to get drugs off the street with law enforcement, just have a mechanism where the police seize and destory the drugs while letting the perp go. It would save the 'hours of paperwork' and would let the police move on to another crime. If you are going to fight the drug war at least fight it more intelligently.

Flap

only solution is to "de-criminalize" it. cocaine and MJ. Allow home grown MJ. THis would unfortunately end the very profitable drug war...so it will never happen.

Ulster: No, it would just move the "very profitable drug war" onto other drugs.

And "de-criminalizing" isn't going far enough. There should be no laws against what you chose to put in your own body. You ARE responsible for your actions when you do so (just like alcohol), but what you put in your own body is none of the governments business.

I agree with the direction this is going in. It should have been done a long time ago. Unfortunately, I believe they are relaxing the laws on MJ for the wrong reasons.

totally agree asi...in addition we could continue with the education and awareness programs.