Seattle will move to repeal misdemeanor marijuana charges that were prosecuted before Washington legalized pot in 2012, City Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes announced during a press conference Thursday.
“I saw firsthand the ‘war on drugs,’ including its devastating impacts on people, especially people of color and their families,” Durkan, a former U.S. Attorney, wrote in a guest editorial for The Stranger published Thursday morning, ahead of the news conference. “People’s lives were ruined for misdemeanor marijuana offenses. Too many here in our community faced huge legal bills and fines, or had a harder time getting loans, apartments, and good-paying jobs.”
In 2012, Washington state voters approved of Initiative 502, which legalized the possession and recreational use of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults ages 21 and older. The City Attorney’s office plans to ask the municipal court to rescind sentences and dismiss charges for misdemeanor possession that is legal under state law.
“Addressing the wrongs that were caused by the failures of the war on drugs for many years in this country – and particularly the damage wrought on communities of color – won’t happen overnight,” Durkan wrote. “But today, this action is a necessary first step in righting the wrongs of the past and putting our progressive values into action.”
Between 1986 and 2010, there were 240,000 marijuana possession arrests in the Evergreen State, according to a 2012 Marijuana Arrest Research Project report. Of those, black Americans were almost three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as whites, despite their lower reported use of the drug.
The Washington capital’s announcement comes a week after San Francisco’s District Attorney George Gascón announced that the California city would retroactively apply California’s 2018 marijuana-legalization laws to overturn past criminal convictions dating back to 1975.
San Francisco also plans to install two safe injection sites, set to open in July, for intravenous drug users to shoot up under medical supervision – a controversial initiative aimed to decrease the amount of opioid overdose deaths, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
credit:msn.com
