Tuesday, August 30, 2005
What does possession of marijuana and speeding on the highway have in common? Nothing yet, but if the executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Kansas, Laura Green, successfully persuades the City Commission at the upcoming Sept. 6 meeting, then getting caught with marijuana would be treated as a speeding ticket. That is if they are caught at all.
Penalties for having marijuana should remain at the State and Federal Courts level and not brought down to the City Courts just because people feel like it’s too harsh.
Of course, the majority of the people in Lawrence that took the Lawrence Journal-World’s poll asking should marijuana possession be treated as a traffic ticket, the response was predictable. 518 of the 734 votes were in favor of this proposal that should just go up in smoke.
As Green wrote in her letter to the City Commissioners, her reasoning was for the welfare of students. As it stands now, a KU student found in possession of marijuana will be arrested and the case would be held at Douglas County Courthouse. Because the case would be in a State or Federal Courthouse, the student would be denied financial aid because of the drug conviction.
If marijuana possession cases were held in City Court, then a drug possession would not appear on a student’s record.
The proposal also asks that marijuana enforcement would become a low priority. Making the punishment less severe for this offense would increase the number of incidents. If there is no incentive to stay drug-free, then the drug problem will rise. It’s like making all speeding tickets $10 or $50 no matter how fast you were traveling over the speed limit. This would just produce more people speeding because the consequence isn’t that great of a punishment.
Green states in her letter to the City Commission, “The long-term benefit will be less young people with criminal records…” This is the line she’s used to win over Lawrence’s mayor, Boog Highberger, and District Attorney Charles Branson, who handles the marijuana cases for Douglas County.
In August 24, 2005 edition of the Lawrence-Journal World, Highberger said, “It wouldn’t bar a student from getting financial aid…[it’s] appropriate because I think that would be a pretty harsh penalty for getting caught with a little pot.” What, then, does qualify as a “little pot,” Mr. Mayor? The Lawrence-Journal World article says the criteria is “small amounts of marijuana for personal use, not cases involving drug dealers.”
So, it’s a little pot, that’s okay. But what about drug dealers who make money here in Lawrence by selling by the bowl full? They aren’t selling it by the kilo, after all.
And what about those students who need financial aid who didn’t get caught with pot? This law makes it possible for a student without a drug conviction to get passed up for student loans by a student with a drug conviction.
Green said the penalties would be similar to those already existing: “a combination of diversion, treatment, probation and a maximum fine of $2,500 or a year in jail.” - the Lawrence-Journal World, Aug. 24, 2005. If the penalties are the same except for the arrest and the drug felony, then this should be a moot point.
If you smoke pot and you get caught, it’s simple - you go to jail. Lawrence is not a monopoly game; there should be no “get out of jail” cards here.
Certainly the fines and jail-time remain the same, but the long lasting effects of being caught with an illegal substance become virtually nil for first time offenders, provided they get caught doing the offending at all.
If drug users and dealers in other Kansas towns hear that they can get their first time offenses stricken from the record, won’t they flock to a town where they know that there won’t be any long term consequences to their record?
Combine that with marijuana enforcement becoming a “low priority,” and it’s almost a given that marijuana use in Lawrence will increase, and it seems like our law-makers are okay with that.
Well, the editorial board is not. The proposed plan is a complete lapse in moral judgement.
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