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Month: October 2022
UG working on a new marijuana sentencing policy
The Unified Government Commission approved a resolution at last Thursday’s meeting that will result in a policy discussion on marijuana and sentencing.
According to Misty Brown, UG chief counsel, this effort began with a group of interested individuals discussing how the marijuana laws affected the residents of Wyandotte County. Brown spoke at the Sept. 29 UG meeting.
Their intent was to take away some of the penalties of the law, she said. More work is required by the committee to discuss larger issues, education, treatment and prevention, she said.
Commissioner Christian Ramirez said he completely supported the resolution.
Brown said the original discussion was about reducing penalties for conviction so as not to be overly burdensome to residents. Part of the discussion centered on a $10 fine for the first offense. But a problem, she said, is that the third offense is still a felony. If residents think it is a minor offense and then they are caught in another district, they potentially could have felony convictions on their record.
The committee will be looking at diversion expungement, and ways of making sure a conviction does not ruin someone’s life, she said.
Commissioner Andrew Davis said he supported this resolution. Missouri is heading toward legalization of marijuana, which will have an effect on this community, he said. He said the Kansas Legislature needs to get moving on the issue.
The country seems to be headed toward legalization, along with Missouri, and Colorado already has legalized marijuana, he said.
Mayor Tyrone Garner said the city of Wichita’s elected body has taken action to remove some major penalties involved with marijuana.
While the resolution that passed 9-0 on Sept. 29 by the UG Commission does not specifically support the decriminalization of marijuana outright, it does support developing a policy of education, prevention and treatment surrounding the possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and the sentencing for the offenses. It mentions mitigation of overly burdensome penalties related to marijuana and paraphernalia offenses. It calls for an analysis of surrounding jurisdictions’ approaches to marijuana sentences and an analysis of public health research on the topic.
The policies that are developed by administrators, the mayor or the committee would come back to the UG Commission for review.
In response to President Biden’s announcement Thursday that those who had been convicted in federal court of simple marijuana offenses would be pardoned, and criminalization laws would be renewed, Kansas House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer issued a statement in support of a state effort.
“Here in Kansas, we need to pass medicinal marijuana and decriminalize possession as soon as we can. It’s the right thing to do for the economy, for healthcare patients, for opioid addicts, for retaining young people, for our farmers, for the state’s coffers, and most of all, for people who have been unfairly maligned for simple marijuana possession,” Sawyer stated.
Kansas Treasurer Lynn Rogers issued a statement that an estimated $42 million in lost tax revenue in Kansas is left on the table each year with the current marijuana laws.
“It is past time for Kansas and the U.S. to end the criminalization of cannabis and recognize the agricultural and medical benefits while freeing up critical resources in law enforcement and justice,” Rogers said. “The Federal Government removing cannabis from the list of schedule 1 narcotics will allow Kansas to make critical changes to banking and enforcement that will free up our economy.”
Biden to pardon all federal offenses for simple marijuana possession, review criminalization
by Ariana Figueroa, Jennifer Shutt and Jacob Fischler, Kansas Reflector
Washington — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced executive actions that would pardon thousands of people with prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession.
He will also direct U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal law as a Schedule I drug, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s most dangerous classification that includes substances such as heroin and LSD.
“Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden plans to call on governors to follow suit with state offenses related to simple marijuana possession.
“Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either,” Biden will say.
The move is intended to address the country’s “failed approach to marijuana,” a senior administration official said Thursday afternoon, minutes before the announcement.
Civil rights organizations and researchers have shown that charges for marijuana possession disproportionately affect Black and brown communities. For example, the ACLU found that Black people were 3.7 times more likely to be charged with marijuana possession compared to white people.
Senior administration officials said that even if a person has not been charged or convicted of a marijuana possession, as of Thursday’s date, “the pardon does cover that conduct.”
The Department of Justice will create an administrative process for those who are pardoned to obtain a certificate of their pardon “so that they will have documentation that they can show to law enforcement, employers and others as needed,” a senior administration official said.
States began decriminalizing or legalizing recreational use of marijuana in 2012, when Colorado and Washington voters passed statewide ballot measures. Over the next decade, 17 more states followed suit. Those states have operated for years in conflict with federal laws that have kept the substance strictly illegal.
The U.S. House passed legislation earlier this year to legalize marijuana nationally, but the bill failed to gain traction in the Senate.
The House voted 220-204 to approve the measure, which would fix the split between federal law and states where recreational marijuana is legal. Three Republicans joined all but two Democrats in approving the measure.
Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.