Virginia introduces new felony bill for over an ounce of marijuana
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:59 am | By: Radical Russ
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.
What a terrible idea!
I hope Rep. Loupassi hears an outcry from his constituents so he knows exactly how they feel about this.
I’m waiting for Webb’s response on this one.