Marijuana is misunderstood by many. In part, that’s because people tend to dismiss what they don’t understand. When it comes to marijuana and whether it should be decriminalized, there isn’t a lot of ambiguity on the topic. People usually are staunch proponents of legalizing the drug or they strongly oppose it.
Fifteen states already have legalized marijuana: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington. In November, Oregon made history after voters approved a ballot initiative to expand access to treatment and decriminalize possession of all drugs.
A plurality of states has passed laws in recent years to either partially or fully decriminalize specific marijuana possession offenses. In Virginia, it is still illegal to possess marijuana, however, the maximum penalty for individuals caught with an ounce or less has been reduced to a $25 civil fine.
According to the Marijuana Policy Project (mpp.org), a person is arrested for a weed offense every 58 seconds. The same study found that approximately 545,600 marijuana arrests were made throughout the country in 2019. Another report conducted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that African Americans are 3.6 times more likely than white Americans to be arrested for possession of marijuana, despite similar usage rates.
“State and local governments have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against Black people and communities, needlessly ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system at tremendous human and financial cost,” said Ezekiel Edwards, Director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project.
Democrats currently control Virginia’s Senate and House of Delegates. During a special session last year, both the Senate and House passed expungement bills. In November, Gov. Ralph Northam came on board with the policy change.
“Rooting out inequities includes expunging the records of people who were convicted of this and certain other crimes in the past,” Northam said at the time. “It’s time to act, during this session, to have the robust debate about how to best conduct the process of expunging people’s records. This will make our system more just and equal.”
On Jan. 19, the new Virginia Senate Committee held its initial hearing on a bill to legalize marijuana in the commonwealth. While lawmakers did not vote on the proposal, they did accept public testimony and asked questions to state officials about specific regulatory components of the legislation.
Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, were the first state senators to back the proposal. “We know that the prohibition on cannabis in both our commonwealth and our country has failed, and over the years, hundreds of thousands of Virginians have been branded criminals and disadvantaged,” Ebbin said at the beginning of the hearing.
The House of the 116th Congress, with Democrats in the majority, passed a second marijuana reform bill in the last days of its existence. Met with derision and mockery by some congressional Republicans, the vote was the first time a full chamber of congress took up the issue to decriminalize cannabis on a federal level. Supported largely along party lines, the final vote was 228-164.
Sponsored by Jerry Nadler, D-NY, the House Judiciary chairman strongly thinks marijuana should be removed from the federal list of controlled substances. “This long-overdue legislation would reverse the failed policy of criminalizing marijuana on the federal level and would take steps to address the heavy toll this policy has taken across the country, particularly on communities of color,” Nadler said.
Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was the bill’s only Republican co-sponsor.
“If we were measuring the success in the ‘war on drugs,’ it would be hard to conclude anything other than the fact that drugs have won because Americans no longer support such harsh laws,” he said.
For years, Roanoke County resident James Hunt, 68, found himself asking the same question with each passing month: Will there ever be any serious federal legislation that will enact various social justice and criminal reforms related to marijuana?
The concept of something like the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act was unfathomable to Hunt a few years ago because “partisanship seems to be at an all-time high in this political climate.”
Introduced in 2019 by the House of Representatives, the bill officially passed on Dec. 4, 2020. In addition to expunging low-level cannabis convictions, the MORE Act, if fully implemented, would remove pot from the controlled substances and impose a five percent tax on legal marijuana sales. With Democrats taking control of the chamber after Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both won their Georgia senate races, the proposed legislation has an excellent chance to pass through the legislative branch.
During his State of the Commonwealth Address on Jan. 13, Northam addressed many topics, including efforts to decriminalize cannabis. That same day, he also unveiled a comprehensive legalization bill.
“We know that while white people and Black people use marijuana at similar rates, Black people are more likely to be charged with a crime for it. And they’re almost four times as likely to be convicted. That happens because that’s how the system was set up generations ago. In fact, one of the early leaders of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency was clear that marijuana laws should be written explicitly to target people of color. And so, they were, and they’ve been targeting people for years,” he said.
The Governor added: “It’s time to join 15 other states and make marijuana legal, and end the current system rooted in inequity. We’ve done the research, and we can do this the right way, leading with social equity, public health and public safety. Reforming our marijuana laws is one way to ensure that Virginia is a more just state that works better for everyone.”
In Virginia, like many other states, marijuana legalization is viewed as an effort to boost tax revenues to counterbalance the COVID-19 economic impact. As an illegal crop, it makes no money. By legalizing and taxing it, the argument some make is that the revenue generated would help communities most disproportionately impacted by the inequities in the laws.
The Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, according to the plan’s outline, would regulate the cannabis industry and involve a seven-member Cannabis Control Advisory Board that Northam would appoint. Retailers who want to get in the cannabis business must follow a few rules: not hire anyone under 21, do not locate near child-focused areas or schools and not have unlicensed people sell marijuana.
For most educational institutions and employers, it is now a misdemeanor to ask applicants to discuss on applications past convictions. Lynchburg native Brittany Otey did not know that until it was brought to her attention. “I know many people who were well-qualified for certain positions but were ultimately overlooked because it was discovered that they smoked weed when they were younger,” Otey said.
President Joe Biden is on the record saying that he wants federal marijuana reform to be part of his administration’s legacy. “We should decriminalize marijuana. I do not believe people should be going to jail for drug use,” said Biden during a town hall event in 2019.
Given how popular marijuana is, it should come as no surprise that the cannabis industry shows no signs of slowing down. While no federal legislation regarding decriminalizing marijuana has been implemented, all signs point to that happening sooner than later, possibly as early as this summer.
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