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Va. lawmakers focus on racial equity as they debate marijuana legalization NED OLIVER
VM - Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, said it wasn’t just a pungent odor that struck him during a recent visit to the city’s newly opened medical marijuana dispensary. “I saw all that marijuana and I was looking over my shoulder waiting on the feds to run in and get us all because there was so much cannabis in there,” said Scott, a lawyer, who contrasted the scene to a court hearing three days later where he witnessed “a young brother get sentenced to five years for possession with intent to distribute marijuana” — a disparate approach to the drug he called absurd and hypocritical. As lawmakers prepare to take up proposals to legalize recreational marijuana, questions about how to address past racial inequities and prevent new ones from cropping up in a legalized marketplace have figured prominently in early discussions. Democrats who back legalization — including Gov. Ralph Northam, who endorsed the concept last month — have framed it as a matter of racial justice, noting the state’s own statistics show Black residents have been 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for simple possession than White residents despite the two groups using the drug at the same rates. Broadly, the discussions have touched on three main areas: How
the state should address past criminal convictions, what steps the state should take to make sure Black entrepreneurs have a chance to make money in the legal marketplace and how the state should spend the estimated $300 million in annual new tax revenue that market is expected to generate. On past criminal charges, there’s already a push among lawmakers and advocates to automatically expunge past criminal convictions for simple possession — an effort they say is important to reduce barriers the records can pose to employment, housing and educational opportunities. The state took a step in that direction when it decriminalized small amounts of marijuana earlier this year, sealing past records in the criminal background check system maintained by the Virginia State Police and prohibiting
most employers, landlords and schools from inquiring about past convictions. Automatically expunging past records would go further, making court records documenting past convictions inaccessible without a court order. Lawmakers have long been at odds on proposals to expand the state’s expungement laws and a much broader automatic expungement proposal died in the Senate during a special legislative session earlier this year. But state legislative analysts said a onetime expungement proposal would be much simpler to execute than a rolling program and prominent Democratic lawmakers in both chambers have said they consider automatic expungement of past possession charges a baseline for any legalization legislation. Merely allowing people with past convictions to petition for
expungements, an approach taken in several states that have already legalized marijuana, would have a much more limited impact, they argue. “If marijuana possession is now legal, then why should your ability to clean the slate be dependent on your ability to hire a lawyer and pay a fee?” said Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, who carried legislation earlier this year that set studies in motion that are guiding the current debate. It remains to be seen whether or how lawmakers address past marijuana convictions for more serious charges, such as distribution, which will remain illegal outside of licensed dispensaries, although potentially with reduced consequences. McClellan said she thought those crimes were more likely to be addressed as a part of the broader ongoing debate surrounding expungement laws. Scott, meanwhile, called the issue urgent. “We need to address possession with intent and people serving time for those crimes — they need to come home right now. And that can happen,” he said, speaking with House Majority Leader Charniele Herring last week during a forum on the issue organized by the Charlottesville-based Tom Tom Foundation and Virginia NORML, the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform Marijuana Laws. Concluded at legacynewspaper.com