A cannabis conviction can follow you around even after you\u2019ve done your time or paid your fine. Your record may come back to haunt you when you apply for a job or an apartment, even if you live in a state when the \u201ccrime\u201d you committed is no longer a crime. But change is coming, slowly, for at least a segment of the affected population.<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s Gov. Jay Inslee on Jan. 9 signed the first pardons under the \u201cMarijuana Justice Initiative\u201d he announced at the start of the year. According to his office, some 3,500 people may ultimately apply and win a pardon without having to hire a lawyer or go to court. Inslee said the initiative will \u201chelp relieve the burden of misdemeanors for marijuana possession and allow people to move on with their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have people who have this burden on their shoulders from a simple, one-time marijuana possession from maybe 20 years ago, and that\u2019s impeding the ability of people to live their lives,\u201d Inslee told Seattle\u2019s\u00a0King5 News<\/a>. \u201cIt can damage their ability to get financing for a home; it can damage their ability to get financing for colleges, even simple things like going on a field trip with your kids.\u201d<\/p>\n Inslee\u2019s actions come in response to activist pressure. He\u00a0unveiled<\/a>\u00a0the initiative at the Jan. 4 Seattle summit of the\u00a0Cannabis Alliance<\/a>, one of the activist groups that had been pushing for the program.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Marijuana Justice Initiative website<\/a>\u00a0states: \u201cIn Washington state, it is no longer considered criminal behavior for adults to possess a small amount of marijuana for personal use. The governor\u2019s Marijuana Justice Initiative intends to recognize the evolution of the state\u2019s beliefs about marijuana and, within existing capacity, provide clemency relief to some who have these convictions on their records.\u201d<\/p>\n The initiative will attempt to speed up the pardon granting process to people with a single misdemeanor conviction on their criminal record for adult marijuana possession under Washington state law.<\/p>\n But the program is actually a cautious and limited one. To be eligible, Washingtonians must have been convicted as an adult, and the conviction must be the only one on record.<\/p>\n More significantly, as a critical view on Cowlitz County\u2019s\u00a0The Daily News<\/a> makes clear, a pardon is not the same as expungement. Getting a conviction expunged from the record and the sentence formally vacated requires court action under state law. With a pardon from the governor, offenders will still have to answer \u201cyes\u201d when asked on housing or employment application forms if they\u2019ve ever been convicted of a crime, although they can clarify that they\u2019ve received executive clemency.<\/p>\n In Maine<\/a>, which voted to legalize in 2016, four state legislators are currently pushing bills to expunge or seal the records of those with past cannabis convictions.<\/p>\n But there is a distinction here, too. As the\u00a0Portland Press Herald<\/a>\u00a0explains, two of the bills call for expungement, while the other two bills call for sealing cases, which means rendering the convictions invisible to prospective employers and the public without actually deleting them from the record.<\/p>\n In Nevada<\/a>, which also voted to legalize in 2016, commissioners in Clark County, which covers Las Vegas, are\u00a0working with<\/a>\u00a0District Attorney Steve Wolfson to wipe out minor cannabis convictions. Commissioner Tick Segerblom is calling for a law to expunge such convictions statewide. \u201cWhatever they did at the time is now legal. I don\u2019t think they should be punished for something that is currently legal,\u201d Segerblom told local\u00a0KTNV.<\/p>\n In\u00a0California<\/a>, legislation\u00a0signed into law<\/a>\u00a0by Gov. Brown last September allows for the \u201crecall,\u201d \u201cdismissal\u201d or \u201csealing\u201d of\u00a0past cannabis convictions if the quantities in question would no longer violate the law under the Adult Use Marijuana Act, passed by California voters in Proposition 64 of 2016. Under California code, \u201crecall\u201d essentially vacates a sentence, \u201cdismissal\u201d expunges the crime from the record, and \u201csealing\u201d keeps the conviction in place but makes it invisible to the public. Under the new law, judges will have discretion which remedy to use.<\/p>\n The legalization measure that was\u00a0defeated<\/a>\u00a0by a vote of 60 to 40 percent in North Dakota in November\u00a0would have mandated<\/a>\u00a0a process to expunge the criminal records of \u201cindividuals with convictions for a controlled substance that has been legalized.\u201d<\/p>\n This is also now a question in Canada<\/a>, of course. In the lead-up to legalization taking effect there in October, voices were raised for a \u201ccannabis amnesty,\u201d wiping out past convictions. But the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicked the proverbial can down the road, saying such a measure would have to wait until after the federal government\u2019s legalization framework was in place.<\/p>\n A measure introduced by the left-opposition\u00a0New Democratic Party<\/a>\u00a0to instate an immediate amnesty last year failed when Trudeau\u2019s Liberals\u00a0voted against<\/a>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n With action still stalled three months into legalization, some are starting to accuse Trudeau and his\u00a0Liberal Party<\/a>\u00a0of hypocrisy on the matter. And in Canada, as in the United States, the wide racial disparity in cannabis arrests especially makes this a question of social justice.<\/p>\n Writes\u00a0Toronto Star<\/a>\u00a0columnist Tiffany Gooch in a commentary this week: \u201cIt isn\u2019t enough to simply adopt language conveying concern for racialized communities who are negatively and disproportionately impacted by prohibition. With 500,000 Canadians holding criminal records for cannabis possession, our government had a responsibility to act\u2026 It\u2019s time we stop penalizing our citizens for simple possession of a now nationally legal substance and get a simplified expungement process underway.\u201d<\/p>\n Until politicians take definitive action, though, people with cannabis convictions will wait in limbo even as legalization hums forward.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, how do you think we should treat past cannabis convictions in the post-prohibition era?<\/p>\n The post Slowly but Surely, Efforts Mount to Expunge Old Cannabis Convictions<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A cannabis conviction can follow you around even after you\u2019ve done your time or paid your fine. Your record may come back to haunt you when you apply for a job or an apartment, even if you live in a state when the \u201ccrime\u201d you committed is no longer aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,50,4312,4548,1534,90,717,26,1675],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32193"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32194,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32193\/revisions\/32194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pardon Versus Expungement<\/h4>\n
A Question for Several States<\/h4>\n
Impatience in Canada<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Slowly but Surely, Efforts Mount to Expunge Old Cannabis Convictions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"