You hear it constantly, and so it\u2019s good to be constantly reminded: \u201cMarijuana legalization is bad\u201d is the king of all privileged takes \u2014 which means, almost always, that it is a bad and wrong take.<\/p>\n
Here are some common examples. Marijuana legalization is bad because it drives up the cost of cannabis, because of taxes, lab-testing, regulation. Marijuana legalization is bad because some cannabis products become available due to same, marijuana legalization is bad because it puts the same government that persecuted the weed and its users in charge of doling it out.<\/p>\n
These takes are privileged because they come from a position of privilege \u2014 the position of not being in jail for marijuana and not at risk of being arrested and having your life upended for marijuana. Not everyone enjoys that position. And they should.<\/p>\n
Thus, something that would extend that privilege \u2014 and maybe even make it universal \u2014 is more important than ensuring that the entire experiment is flawless, smooth and exactly as you like it. And as the latest arrest statistics out of\u00a0California<\/a> reveal, marijuana legalization has been extremely effective at seeing fewer people arrested for marijuana.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the California Attorney General\u2019s Office released its\u00a0annual crime report<\/a>. And according to\u00a0California NORML<\/a>, which perused the report to pull out the\u00a0relevant data<\/a>, marijuana arrests plummeted by 56\u00a0\u00a0percent in 2017, the first full year when adults 21 and over could legally possess small quantities of the drug.<\/p>\n Some 13,018 people were arrested for cannabis in 2016. In 2017, after voters approved Proposition 64 on the same night other voters elected Donald Trump, 6,065 people were arrested for marijuana in California.<\/p>\n The data doesn\u2019t give much in the way of nuance or detail. We\u2019re not sure how many people were arrested for a marijuana crime in addition to something else. It\u2019s not uncommon for a marijuana charge to be tacked onto a crime report, if an individual had marijuana as well as a harder drug, burglary tools, an unlicensed firearm or some other more serious offense.<\/p>\n But we do know that Prop. 64 reduced<\/a>\u00a0nearly every criminal penalty for marijuana<\/a> from misdemeanors and felonies to infractions \u2014 and we also know that far fewer people are in serious trouble for marijuana, as felony arrests fell even further, from 7,949 in 2016 to 2,086 in 2017, according to the report.<\/p>\n Felony crimes include selling to minors or repeated or \u201caggravated\u201d sales or intent to sell. \u201cAggravated\u201d can be nebulous but generally means significant amounts well beyond those that might be plausibly seen as for personal use.<\/p>\n Medical cannabis patients\u2019 higher allowances for plants and for possession limits \u2014which can vary from county to county \u2014 were untouched. Significantly, \u201ccrimes\u201d related to possessing too much cannabis or growing too many plants or selling were reduced to less serious offenses.<\/p>\n Prop. 64 allowed adults 21 and over to possess up to an ounce of cannabis and cultivate up to six plants in their home. It did not extend those rights to people under 21, and it also did not allow for unlicensed sales. Nor did it remove restrictions on possessing drugs \u2014 including cannabis \u2014 in school zones.<\/p>\n There are plenty of other things Prop. 64 did not do. It did not spring from incarceration, immediately, everyone incarcerated for a cannabis-related crime. It did not immediately wipe clean the records of all former cannabis \u201coffenders\u201d (though some district attorneys are now doing that work<\/a>).<\/p>\n But as these data show, it absolutely led to fewer people arrested for marijuana, immediately. In that way, legalization is like democracy \u2014 imperfect, incomplete, and constantly evolving. The big fights now are over equity and access to the market \u2014 not whether or not it\u2019s a good use of police time and public resources to continue arresting people for cannabis. That argument is won, and only thanks to that do we have the privilege of fixing everything else that\u2019s wrong with our drug policy.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0how do you feel about the implementation of Prop 64 in California?<\/p>\n The post California Arrests Plummet With Marijuana Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
You hear it constantly, and so it\u2019s good to be constantly reminded: \u201cMarijuana legalization is bad\u201d is the king of all privileged takes \u2014 which means, almost always, that it is a bad and wrong take. Here are some common examples. Marijuana legalization is bad because it drives up theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,1980,4408,50,90,901,415,2111,1754],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27776,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27775\/revisions\/27776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nRead More: California Arrests Plummet With Marijuana Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"