New York lawmakers introduce marijuana legalization bill for 2021 session

A commission created by President Donald Trump recently released a report on law enforcement issues that criticized local efforts to legalize marijuana or decriminalize drugs.

The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement’s 300-page document covers many areas, but it focuses on cannabis and drug policy in a number of sections.

For example, he discusses the need to tackle issues such as drug addiction and homelessness, but says they need to be balanced with “law enforcement and maintaining public safety.”

The report notes that “communities across the country have decriminalized or reduced penalties for drug use, as in the case of marijuana, or ‘quality of life’ crimes – actions that often result from homelessness – like public urination.

The panel argued that drug policy reforms “only raise the bar for law enforcement arrests,” but “ignore the fact that law enforcement officers order should always handle complaints about these people from community members, responding to non-criminal results of untreated substances. using problems (eg, overdoses) or interacting with large populations of homeless people. “

The commission recommends that “the Department of Justice examine how local laws and policies that decriminalize or reduce penalties for drug use or homeless activities impact law enforcement and security. public. “

The commission, which was established by Trump as part of a 2019 executive order, argued that adopting counterintuitive decriminalization policies “ often results in an increase in the number of people in need that overlap law enforcement agencies, while the mechanisms to sanction such behavior and entice people into court-ordered treatment programs are being suppressed. “

“It may come at a higher cost to the community, including escalation and long-term drug use,” the report says, concluding that the Department of Justice and state and local governments should weigh “the impact and side effects of local laws and policies. and jurisdictions are concerned with the safety of their communities and the effectiveness of their criminal justice systems. “

The document also quotes the US lawyer from Vermont as saying that decriminalization “takes a tool away from law enforcement, signals that the behavior is correct and will have no consequences, and will logically lead to more unwanted behavior.”

The 18 members of the committee have primarily law enforcement backgrounds. One member is the chief operating officer of the Drug Enforcement Administration, for example, and another is the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Florida Attorney General is also a member, as are several local sheriffs.

The commission report also rejects the reformers’ argument that punitive anti-drug laws primarily contribute to mass incarceration, claiming that non-violent drug offenders make up a small fraction of the overall population. federal prison.

That said, he recognizes that law enforcement alone cannot “remedy the scourge of drug addiction”.

“Law enforcement is part of a government architecture of social protection and public safety systems that work together to keep communities safe,” the report said. “Nonetheless, in many communities law enforcement still has the primary responsibility to deal with the social ills that motivate crime – whether it is mental illness, addiction or homelessness.

“As law enforcement has assumed both public safety and social protection duties, limited resources within their agencies have been diverted from traditional policing to the realm of social service providers – where the forces often lack the relevant resources, expertise or authority, ”he continues.

The commission held 15 hearings to gather testimony in preparation for the report, and cannabis policy was raised at several of these meetings.

In one of the more interesting exchanges, the Sheriff of Orange County, Calif., Said the federal government should “advocate the removal [marijuana] as a Schedule I narcotic ”to promote public safety, as this could help facilitate the creation of a cannabis tampering test.

That said, he claimed that high THC products cause psychosis and expressed his frustration with the wider reform movement, saying California’s drive to reduce prison populations is at the expense of our residents, of our families. [and] kids.”

A California federal prosecutor was asked how he handles the conflict between federal and state cannabis policies and told the panel that his office is focused “on what we consider to be the classic federal affairs of marijuana and that it is largely interstate trafficking in marijuana.

The testimony of McGregor Scott, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of California, informed a section of the final report regarding the discretion to prosecute.

“A threat to the rule of law, and the ability of law enforcement to enforce it, has recently come from self-identified ‘progressive’ prosecutors or ‘social reformers’ who claim to share mistrust and cynicism towards forces that some in their communities have, ”the report says.

“Despite their election to enforce the law, these prosecutors regard the very laws they apply as unfair and illegitimate, and therefore seek to undermine this system by unilaterally deciding not to apply certain laws,” he said. “Unlike the usual prosecutorial discretion, in which a prosecutor assesses whether to prosecute after a case-by-case review of individual circumstances, non-enforcement policies remove this discretion entirely by requiring that certain laws will be categorically not applied. “

A note from the Obama-era Justice Department provided prosecutors with advice on what kind of discretion they should use when it comes to prosecuting cannabis cases in the legalization movement at the level. state, but it was canceled under Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

The Trump administration’s approach to marijuana has been difficult to define. On the one hand, the president appointed numerous officials with hostile attitudes towards cannabis reform; On the flip side, there has been no federal crackdown on legal marijuana states.

In a sense, the commission report reflects this dichotomy. While criticizing the legalization of cannabis and the broader decriminalization of drugs, members refrained from suggesting that the federal government should step up prosecutions in the growing legal market.

It remains to be seen how cannabis will be handled under the Justice Department of President-elect Joe Biden.

He supports the legalization of medical marijuana, modest rescheduling, decriminalization, write-offs for low-level convictions, and the ability for states to adopt their own policies without fear of intervention. federal. However, he has yet to appoint an attorney general who could fill the lack of guidance for federal prosecutors – and his continued opposition to legalizing adult use keeps lawyers on their toes.

Illinois sold over $ 1 billion worth of legal marijuana in 2020, new state data shows