« Dive Master Held Rolling ‘Joint’. | Main | Canada: Martin Spurns Warning About Pot Legislation. »
Columbia Voters Ease Marijuana Restrictions: Possession Of Small Amounts Of Drug Will Be Handled In Municipal Courts; Medical Use OK’d.
By admin | November 12, 2004
By Scott Charton
Associated Press
Nov 10, 2004.
Sifting through results from this college town’s passage of two proposals easing up on marijuana prosecutions, attorney Dan Viets sees something notable: The overwhelming approval means voters across the political spectrum supported the changes.
That’s encouraging to Viets, a longtime state legislative lobbyist for decriminalizing marijuana and allowing its medical use statewide.
Republicans will control the Legislature and the governor’s office starting in January, “and this vote indicates to me that a bipartisan voting population, as it matures, is recognizing that marijuana use is not really something that ought to be treated like a crime,” Viets said Tuesday.
Outnumbered critics of the two proposals approved Nov. 2 dismiss Viets’ suggestion support for decriminalizing marijuana has grown beyond Columbia.
They say proponents wrapped their local campaign in misleading information, helped by about $50,000 from a national group supporting marijuana decriminalization. Foes say they lacked organization and money.
That’s in contrast to a city election in April 2003, when a single pot proposition merging sentencing changes and allowing medical marijuana flopped at the polls, partly because a Bush administration drug official traveled to Columbia to speak against it.
New petitions were circulated after that defeat to put the now-divided proposals onto a general election ballot, when larger turnout would presumably help, and it did.
“This time, they struck popular chords by conjuring up this idea that a first-time offender will lose a federal student loan if they’re convicted in state court, and that just wasn’t happening here. And as for the medical marijuana portion, they left out the part that people would still have to buy it off the street, even with a doctor’s note,” Boone County Prosecutor Kevin Crane said in an interview Tuesday.
Crane and Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm made statements against both proposals, but they were drowned out.
Proposition 1, the medical marijuana proposal, got more than 69 percent of the vote. It allows seriously ill patients, with permission from their physician, to use marijuana inside the city limits. No other Missouri community has anything similar on the books, and marijuana possession remains a state crime if a charge is filed in state court.
Proposition 2, which was approved with almost 62 percent of the vote, stipulates that marijuana arrests shall be the lowest priority of city law enforcement. And it mandates that arrests for possession of 35 grams or less of pot about 1 1/4 ounces shall be handled in municipal court, a less serious venue than state court.
The maximum penalty: a $250 fine, with no jail. Charges could be dropped after a year if the defendant has no similar run-ins with the law.
In state court, the same charge packs a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.
Viets said that was a key to winning votes in the home of the University of Missouri-Columbia: pointing out that state court convictions for marijuana possession can cost even a first offender their federal student loans.
“It just doesn’t benefit anybody to force someone to drop out of school,” Viets said.
Viets could not provide a specific number of Columbia cases in which students found guilty of marijuana possession in state court lost federal student aid. The National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws reports some 150,000 such cases during the last five years.
Crane, the state prosecutor, thinks the effect on student loans was overstated. He says his office already sent first-offense possession charges involving small amounts of marijuana to municipal court.
“It was the usual practice anyway,” Crane said. “Now, the Columbia police have had some discretion taken away by the voters.”
Topics: Articles | Comments Off
Comments are closed.