Chicago Lawmakers aim to Reduce the Pot Penalty

Currently, anyone who is caught with illegal possession of marijuana in Chicago is arrested and hauled off to jail on the spot. While this may seem like a just charge, the mayor of Chicago and the police superintendent are trying to lessen the burden. They believe that if pot possessors were let off with a ticket, as opposed to a long arrest process, that it would help increase the efficiency of the police force. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the police in Chicago arrested more than 18,000 people for misdemeanor possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana last year. This preoccupied the law enforcement for a total of 45,000 hours. If the cops were able to simply issue a ticket when someone was caught with a small amount of the drug, then it would cut the amount of hours spent on these offenses in half, and allow the police to be readily available for crimes that are more important.

If this new ordinance was implemented, it would make pot in small amounts a ticketable, but not jailable offense. Currently the murder rate in Chicago is climbing, and the government believes that they need every policeman free to rush to a crime scene at any moment. Most of the men and women who are arrested for pot possession are in the same neighborhoods as the murderers and rapists that the police need to seek out and arrest, so the mayor believes that they should be focusing on the serious crimes, rather than the petty ones. Illinois isn’t the only state that has considering lessening the penalties for marijuana possession. In Rhode Island, a person who is caught with less than once ounce of marijuana is given a $150 fine. In New York, the governor has proposed a bill that would chance the possession of a small amount of marijuana into a ticketable offense, rather than a serious criminal misdemeanor.