Texas may join the national trend.
- Click here for the article.
. . . According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, roughly 379,000 Texans have been arrested for possessing 2 ounces or less of marijuana in the past five years. Those criminal charges are for being caught with small amounts of a drug that an estimated 128 million American adults have tried — and that 55 million U.S. residents regularly use, according to a 2017 poll.
Ten states and the District of Columbia have legalized small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Thirteen other states have made possessing small amounts a civil rather than a criminal infraction, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Texas, possession of any amount of marijuana is illegal.
Still, there’s growing public support and bipartisan backing at the Capitol for lessening — or ditching — criminal penalties for what are currently low-level offenses. And some local court officials are already backing off of pursuing charges against some first-time offenders.
Lawmakers this year are pushing a bevy of bills that range from reducing the criminal penalties for those found with small amounts of marijuana to eliminating those criminal penalties altogether. But there remains some lingering political pushback from conservative hardliners and law enforcement groups who fear decriminalizing marijuana will increase crime rates and eventually lead to the legalization of other drugs.
. . . In Dallas County, newly-elected District Attorney John Creuzot said his office is currently declining prosecution for first-time marijuana possession offenders. He said he wants to free his prosecutors up to go after suspects who are accused of violent crimes or infractions that often portend to future violence.
“I don’t know of any research that shows having small amounts of marijuana has any bearing on community safety — certainly not violent crime,” Creuzot said.
Harris County prosecutors, meanwhile, offer a diversion program that gives residents caught with less than four ounces of marijuana the option to take a $130, four-hour class that focuses on decision making and risky behavior. If the class is taken within 90 days, participants will not have criminal charges pressed against them.
Since the program's implementation in March 2017, more than 7,000 people have gone that route as opposed to “the jailhouse or the courthouse,” said Dane Schiller, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney's Office.
“Thousands of people have not spent a night in jail, not been booked, fingerprinted, prosecuted and saddled with a record that could shadow them for the rest of their lives,” Schiller said.
