Minimum amounts of marijuana you need to possess in order to be considered a felon in the United States

Since I’m in a map-making mood, I present to you my newest creation – the Marijuana Felony Possession Minimums Map, generated with our data from the NORML State Database.

The minimum amount necessary to trigger a felony charge is color-coded from the extreme low end of 20 grams in purple, to 1 ounce amounts in red, quarter pounds in orange, one pound in yellow, and a full kilogram (2.2 pounds) in dark green.  This means a scant ¾ of an ounce makes you a felon in Florida, but it takes a full pound in Utah to be a felon, and Alabama won’t consider you a felon until you have a kilogram.

Some states that are lenient on the first offense of possession aren’t so understanding on the second.  Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wisconsin will consider you a felon for possessing any amount of marijuana if it is your second offense.

Other states may not be colored and are still gray.  These are the states that don’t have felony possession charge in statute; all possession is a misdemeanor.  However, in those states it is highly likely that large amounts would be prosecuted as felonies for intent to sell.

Finally, states that have decriminalized personal possession are bordered with bright green.  In these states, possession of less than 1 ounce (100 grams in Ohio) is not even a misdemeanor, but rather a civil infraction with a fine and no jail time and no criminal record.  However, in those states sometimes other charges are used to bring about a misdemeanor and arrest (like New York, where suspects are coaxed into displaying the marijuana in public, which is a misdemeanor, or Massachusetts, where suspects holding paraphernalia are charged with a misdemeanor for that.)  Also many decriminalized states will suspend one’s driving privileges for possession, which is an administrative action

What the hell is going on in Crestview, Florida? Are they running some sort of “blabber to the police” special I haven’t heard about?  Is there some sort of mad cow disease running rampant among the young?  Have evil scientists secretly created bud hybrids than make you extra stupid?

(NW Florida Daily News) CRESTVIEW — Police executing a search warrant were told by the suspect they had “missed it” and he had just sold all of his marijuana, according to a Crestview Police Department arrest report.

When officers stopped Justin Ray Smith, 19, on April 17, he said he had sold “somewhere between one to three pounds about six hours ago,” the report said. They recovered about $2,700, of which $1,100 was from that sale, Smith told officers, according to the report.

Smith also said he had several baggies of marijuana in his room and he owned a digital scale. Officers also found a black duffel bag that Smith told officers had held 3½ pounds of marijuana.

He was charged with felony possession with intent to distribute and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Wait, they “stopped” Smith?  That doesn’t sound like executing a search warrant, that sounds like pulling someone over in a traffic stop, a cop asking, “smells funny, got weed?” and a damn fool saying, “Naw, I just sold it”, which then leads to a search warrant.  That’s a five year, $5,000, loss of voting rights, felony record lesson to learn.

(NW Florida Daily News) CRESTVIEW — After pulling over a driver known not to have a valid license, a Crestview Police Department officer noticed that both the driver and the passenger appeared “very nervous.”

When the officer asked them if they had anything in the vehicle like weapons or drugs, the driver, Kendal J. Watkins, said he had marijuana.

The 21-year-old Crestview man then began pulling baggies of marijuana out of his pockets and the groin area of his pants, according to his arrest report.

He was charged with felony possession of marijuana with intent to sell.

So, you’re going to go out with trousers full of separately packaged doobage, driving a car while you don’t have a valid license.  Please tell me your passenger didn’t have a license, lest I have to browbeat you for not making him/her drive.  Not much he could’ve done here; the police would’ve taken him in for the driving without a license and found the weed anyway… but that doesn’t mean you make the policeman’s job easier!  Shut up and a refuse a search!  You don’t get any more busted when the cops find the weed you never mentioned and despite what they say, it won’t “go easier” on you if you hand them over evidence and confess to crimes (easier for them, sure).  Cha-ching, five years, $5,000.  Next!

(NW Florida Daily News) CRESTVIEW — Crestview police arrested a man recently when he stepped out of a car covered in marijuana residue.

Upon further investigation they also found baggies packaged for sale, an April 17 police report said.

The driver of the car told officers that his passenger, James Knight, had to have brought the noxious herb into the car.

“James must have had the marijuana with him, otherwise I wouldn’t have given him a ride,” the man told officers, according to the incident report.

Knight, 30, was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, resisting arrest and possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana.

Covered in marijuana residue?  Were you rolling a joint on the dashboard and hit a bump?  What the hell is going on in Crestview, Florida?  Please, Northwest Floridians, send me an email at chapters@norml.org and let’s get you a NORML Chapter to start educating these people about their rights!

Virginia’s 2009 legislative session has only just begun and already a very bad bill, H.B. 1807, has been introduced that threatens to increase criminal penalties for marijuana offenses. In a time of budget crisis, Virginia legislators should be focusing on reducing governmental costs by exploring legislative options, including decriminalizing marijuana, not on increasing penalties and locking up more non-violent offenders.

H.B. 1807 introduced by G. Manoli Loupassi (R-Richmond), would create a new added felony for transporting from one ounce to five pounds of marijuana into Virginia with an intent to sell. While the determination of an intent to sell is based on the totality of the circumstances, it is possible that police could try to use this unnecessarily-created felony to charge someone driving between their job in Washington, D.C. and their home in Virginia for possessing a little more than an ounce of marijuana. In that scenario, the individual could face an additional Draconian sentence of between one and five years in prison on top of the already harsh penalties for possession.

In 2007, Virginia law enforcement arrested 19,606 people for marijuana offenses. With this change in policy, “thousands of hours of police time will be freed up, the equivalent of adding a lot of bodies to police forces. Court dockets will be stripped of thousands of cases, clearing the way for cases involving real crimes. Thousands of people won’t find their futures compromised by criminal records.” Maybe then we would have the money we need to pay teachers what they deserve? Fix roads?

In fact the Virginia legislature convened a commission to study the marijuana laws and recommended decriminalization for many of the same reasons.

It is time to enact the commission’s recommendations for Virginia and end the hopeless cycle of increased imprisonment and criminal sanction, an approach that historically has had the predictable results of increased violence and increased gang activity as well as increasing problematic drug use.

America is waking up and realizing that after forty years of “lock ‘em up” hasn’t worked, maybe it is time to think of a smarter way to deal with marijuana.

[UPDATED and bumped - see below]

Teen pleads in crash that killed 3 | www.jconline.com | Journal and Courier
A Crawfordsville teenager has admitted to smoking marijuana about two weeks before causing a two-vehicle crash a year ago that killed two of his classmates and an Indianapolis woman. 

Tyler R. Sutton, 18, pleaded guilty this morning in Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 to three counts of operating a vehicle with a controlled substance causing death and feticide, all Class C felonies.

If Judge Thomas Busch accepts Sutton’s plea with the Tippecanoe County prosecutor’s office, at least two of those counts would have to be served concurrently – meaning the former North Montgomery High School student could spend up to 16 years in prison.

Toxicology tests taken after the crash showed that Sutton had marijuana metabolites in his blood, though Sutton’s Indianapolis-based attorney, Dennis Zahn, disputed in court that the drug was present in the teen’s urine.

Indiana law requires only that narcotic metabolites be present to establish impaired driving.

Though Sutton also admitted to smoking marijuana, he said today that it was his first and only time.

The teenager was 17 years old at the time of crash, but juvenile court Judge Loretta Rush waived him to adult court in March.

Indiana is one of the states with a per se DUID statute.  In layman’s terms, that means if you test positive for any drug metabolite, you’ve been driving impaired in the eyes of the law.  That’s metabolites, not the actual drug, as would be the case with someone failing an alcohol breathalyzer.

In the case of marijuana, inactive, non-impairing marijuana metabolites can remain detectable in one’s system for weeks days.  Tyler Sutton was no more [likely to be] an impaired driver than any other sober driver on the road; he just had the misfortune to smoke a joint a couple of weeks days prior to the wreck

These insane per se statutes that count metabolites as impairment essentially mean that anyone who smokes marijuana in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, South Dakota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, or Georgia and then drives anytime within the next day (for light, occasional tokers) to up to a month and a half week or more (for chronic tokers like me) is as guilty of a DUI as a drunk who blows over .08 BAC on a breathalyzer.

[UPDATE: NORML's Paul Armentano email's me to say "No way marijuana metabolites are present in the blood two weeks later.  Huestis's work documented residual THC-COOH metabolite levels in blood for 72+ hours (THC and 11-hydroxy THC were purged within hours), but two weeks?

There's some recent unpublished work by Huestis finding residual THC/blood levels in the plasma (more sensitive by a factor of two than blood) of heavy users for 7 days (equivalent of 3.5 days if we were measuring whole blood), so I'd imagine that metabolites would linger even longer in such cases, but these were chronic users."]

I’m updating the headline and correcting some of the text and I apologize that I didn’t know those studies or look them up.  However, the main point still stands – metabolites in one’s blood only document prior use, not current impairment.  

The young man’s “first time two weeks ago” story is suspect, but there’s no evidence that he was smoking in the car or prior to driving.  He’s eighteen, two of his friends, one 24 weeks pregnant, and an innocent 78-year-old lady are dead, and he’s looking at Criminal University until he’s 34.  It’s a tragic enough – do we need to throw away a large chunk of this kid’s life for the crime of being a marijuana smoker who drives?  Was it really a crime of ten Class C felonies?  Or was it more like reckless driving or reckless endangerment or manslaughter – not three homicides and a feticide?

If there were proof of intoxication, that’s where I could support a stiff prison sentence.  But metabolites only prove he’s a toker.  So I guess no tokers are allowed to drive in Indiana, even when sober.

Meanwhile, a former Indianapolis police detective is busted for driving 68 mph in a 55 zone (2 mph faster than Tyler Sutton) at 2am and tests at .09 blood alcohol level – proof of impairment!  He is let go on his own recognizance, with his $2,500 bail waived, and given a ride home.  He faces “a minor misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a maximum $500 fine.”

Then there’s the police chief in Jasper, Indiana, getting caught driving drunk and blew a .13.  He, too, was busted early in the morning, about 1am, going ten miles over the limit and crossing over the center line.  He, too, is facing a misdemeanor charge.

So perhaps the eighteen-year-olds of Indiana should give up the pot and switch to alcohol.  You can be proven impaired and only get a misdemeanor (well, maybe it helps a little to be a cop).  Sadly, it seems some do, as just today, another young eighteen-year-old from Crawfordsville, Indiana has suffered a tragedy.  He was a young man at the Delta Tau Delta fraternity at Wabash College.  ”Authorities say alcohol was possibly involved.” 

New Orleans CityBusiness — The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans
Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney following Eddie Jordan’s resignation Oct. 30, hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys.

After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.

The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.

The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.

Landrum-Johnson’s decision to accept felony charges on people arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is a dramatic break from the tactics of former DAs Jordan and Harry Connick.

A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.

Under Jordan and Connick, however, second and third offenses were routinely reduced to misdemeanors that typically did not require a trial. This freed up public resources to be spent on violent crimes as opposed to minor, victimless offenses, Singer said.

Landrum-Johnson was unavailable for comment but her spokesman Dalton Savwoir said that while he agreed there has been an increase in second and third offense marijuana felony acceptances, the increase is not attributable to a change in policy.

“Rather, the increase is a result of the fact that during 2008, it has become easier to obtain certified copies of prior convictions (that are) required evidence (to prosecute) second and third offense marijuana cases,” Savwoir said.

In other words, Savwoir said, clerical malfunctions that prevented the DA from seeking felony prosecutions of marijuana cases in the past have been rectified.

None of this would have anything to do with Keva Landrum-Johnson running for a judgeship in Orleans Criminal District Court, would it?  Surely this increase in felony prosecution for minor marijuana charges is solely because they fixed a clerical glitch, not because someone running a political campaign wants to point to her high felony prosecution record and proclaim how “tough on crime” she is.