District Attorney George Gascon spoke yesterday at a drug reform panel and said that after years working in law enforcement and public policy, he believes "the war on drugs has been a failure." He was speaking in support of a bill now pending in the CA Senate, sponsored by senator Mark Leno, that would downgrade possession of drugs like cocaine and heroin to misdemeanors, as opposed to felonies. Currently, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is only an infraction, while possession of hash can be classified as either a misdemeanor or a felony.
Critics say Leno's bill is dangerous because some addicts may see the threat of felony conviction as a motivator to enter treatment programs. We don't know about that. Then there's the fact that police use felony drug possession as a means of locking people who may be guilty of other crimes.
Leno says that drug prosecutions and jail time for drug possession are creating a "chronic underclass" and he has a point. You probably no someone, a "friend" say, who has carried around a baggie of coke on more than one occasion. But how many friends do you know who have been busted for it and convicted for felonies? And there's no more room in the jails, so...
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