San Francisco officials announced Wednesday that the district attorney’s office will be clearing all charges of marijuana misdemeanors dating back to 1975. This comes nearly a month after recreational marijuana use became officially legal in California.
There are about 3,000 misdemeanors in the city, all of which will be automatically dismissed. Similarly, San Diego, a city in Southern California, also decided to follow suit and clear weed charges. The law that legalized marijuana use, Proposition 64, outlined that a person convicted of a previous charge now considered legal would be able to petition a court to have the charges removed from record. However, some argued that this created an unnecessary financial burden, as a lawyer would need to be hired in order to accomplish this. The new amendment would allow convicts to forgo the lawyer process and, in the process, allow for many more people to be able to clear their records.
The debate over the previous marijuana convicts intensified greatly over the past month, especially in California. On both sides of the argument, a general confusion grew over the awkward position that Proposition 64 left the state in. Once a law is reversed or changed in any way, does that mean the people who committed the crime before said change are freed? It became clear, however, that many marijuana convictions were unfairly harsh and disproportionately targeted people of color, therefore it would only be right to review the records.
In a statement, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón commented, “While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country’s disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular.”
So, what does this mean if you were convicted of a crime involving marijuana? It depends on where exactly you are located in California. While San Francisco and San Diego are clearing all misdemeanors, Fresno and Santa Clara Counties will be implementing a case by case process. Hopefully, it will become easier for convicts to find jobs and move on with their lives without having a marijuana offense tainting their record. San Francisco’s initiative will help show other cities and states how exactly to transition with legal marijuana use.
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