Athens, Georgia, on the cusp of the decriminalization ordinance

The city of Athens, Georgia is on the verge of major drug reform, with the Athens-Clarke County Legislative Review Committee passing a measure hailed as “Georgia’s most comprehensive marijuana decriminalization ordinance.”

The regulation, which was unanimously approved by the committee last week, “would reduce penalties for possession of amounts of marijuana (defined as less than 28 grams) by punishing such violations with a $1 fine,” Students said for Sensible Drug Policy, which highlighted some of its advocacy efforts in Athens-Clarkes County in a blog post Thursday.

The group says that since 2017 it has been “engaging with the Athens Clarke district to reduce penalties for cannabis possession” and that it has ultimately “been able to bring together community stakeholders and local officials before the Legislative Committee to do so.” develop a plan of attack”.

Once implemented, the ordinance would make “possession of less than 28 grams of a marijuana product a civil offense,” according to the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, while also enshrining the “already standard practice of the District Attorney and Athens Clarke County Police not to prosecute or.” arrest citizens; 19 other municipalities across Georgia have already issued similar ordinances.

The regulation will help Athens, home of the University of Georgia, stand out in a state that has been slow to embrace cannabis reform.

Following last week’s committee vote, Raiden Washington, the president of the University of Georgia’s Sound Drug Policy Chapter, said drug policies “that provide equitable access and resources for harm reduction are an impartial matter.”

“The drug war has impacted all communities across identity and political lines, whether through the loss of loved ones to overdoses or incarceration. It’s time we stand together for the betterment of our entire community,” Washington said. “The tools of the masters were used by the downtrodden.”

Students for Sensible Drug Policy noted that Georgia is “one of only 19 states that still have prison sentences for simple possession of marijuana, and one of only 13 that do not have a compassionate medicinal cannabis law.”

“The criminalization of drug possession is fueling the mass criminalization system of the US and Georgia. GA has 183 prisons in 159 counties. The total population of Georgia county jails in 2019 was 45,340. The state had 420,000 people on parole,” Jeremy Sharp, SSDP Southeast Regional Director, wrote in the blog post on Thursday. “In 34 state and private detention facilities, 54,113 individuals were under the jurisdiction of the GA Correctional Facility. The GA Department of Corrections had 9,169 employees and a budget of $1,205,012,739. 1 in 20 Georgians is on probation, probation, in prison or under some sort of supervision. The national average is 1 and 99. Private parole is an offender-funded system. Private companies with state or local contracts are allowed to charge probationers with all manner of additional fees and surcharges that far exceed their court sentences. Failure to pay these fees may constitute a parole violation and risk re-incarceration. Georgia has a long history of repressive legal mechanisms used to disenfranchise.”

The state’s lack of access to medicinal cannabis has been particularly frustrating for advocates.

Georgia legislators legalized the treatment back in 2015 by passing the Haleigh’s Hope Act, which allowed qualifying patients to obtain cannabis oil with no more than 5% THC. But seven years after the bill was passed, these patients still don’t have legal access to the oil.

A bill that wanted to change that failed in the Georgia State Senate this spring.