The cradle of civil rights embraces marijuana decriminalization.
On Monday night, the Atlanta City Council voted unanimously to decriminalize marijuana. Gratified by the 15-0 vote, Mayor Kasim Reed fired off an encouraging tweet. Noting his intention to review and sign the legislation, the mayor thanked two specific councilmembers for their “leadership on marijuana reform.”
Decriminalized and not legalized
Once signed by Mayor Reed, the new ordinance will ensure that individuals caught with less than one ounce of marijuana in the City of Atlanta will no longer face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Instead, those caught with less than an ounce of weed will face a fine of $75 – and zero incarceration time.
Worth noting, Atlanta City Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean offered a significant reminder during an April meeting, “If you get arrested by anybody but a city cop, you’re toast.”
Violators of Georgia’s draconian pot laws will still be prosecuted vigorously if caught with their personal cannabis stash outside of Atlanta’s city limits.
Kwanza Hall, the councilman who originally sponsored the measure, told Atlanta’s Fox 5 News, “Reforming the racist marijuana laws on the book in Atlanta has been just one in a number of reforms that I have fought for.”
Hall, who seeks to correct the “widespread racial disparities” in Atlanta’s marijuana arrest rate, pointed to some rather alarming statistics in a post by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 92 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession between 2014 and 2016 in Fulton County (in which Atlanta resides) were of African-American descent.
Councilmen Hall, who is running to be the next mayor of Atlanta, explained that decriminalization will “help reduce the inequities that our justice system levies on people of color.”
credit:marijuana.com