Five Texas cities are voting on decriminalization this year

This could be a big year for Texas as there are currently five different decriminalization measures on November ballots from five different cities. It seems this will be a big year for decriminalization across the supersized state, albeit slow.

Last week, activists from Harker Heights progressive group Ground Game Texas announced they had collected enough signatures on their local ballots for a decriminalization measure, making them the fifth Texas city to have done so so far. All of these cities will follow in the footsteps of Austin, a city that successfully passed decriminalization.

To vote in Harker Heights, proponents needed signatures from more than 25% of registered voters, and they exceeded their goal.

“Following the success of Prop A in Austin and recently securing ballot initiatives in Killeen and San Marcos, Ground Game Texas is proud to provide Harker Heights residents with an opportunity to decriminalize marijuana,” said Julie Oliver, the organization’s executive director to a press release. “Ground Game Texas continues to demonstrate that popular politics on issues like workers, wages and grass can help expand and electrify the Texas electorate when placed directly in front of voters.”

The goal of the Harker Heights Freedom Act is to ensure that “law enforcement officers may not serve subpoenas or make arrests for possession of Class A or Class B marijuana offenses” except in specific circumstances such as a violent crime or a felony-level narcotics case, classified by the police as a “high priority investigation”. In other words, the goal is to only focus on the high-level drug trade, not ordinary people using cannabis.

If passed, this measure would also ensure that police cannot issue subpoenas on people who simply swung or otherwise used paraphernalia. This keeps the system away from those who have either small amounts of cannabis or just a used pipe.

For this measure to become a reality, city officials have yet to formally authorize the signatures and ensure they are all valid before the measure goes on the ballot. This initiative is just one in a broader effort to enact cannabis policy reform in one city at a time, as there is currently no process in Texas to include this in the statewide vote.

In the past, Austin proved this process can work when the city approved a ballot measure to decriminalize cannabis. It also banned police warrants in general, all thanks to the work of Ground Game Texas.

The group also works with Mano Amiga, a criminal justice reform group dedicated to freeing cannabis consumers. They worked with them to ensure there were more than enough signatures to get San Marcos decriminalization on the ballot as well, and continued the reform drive across the state.

Ground Game Texas also reported in May that activists had collected enough signatures to put Killeen on the ballot for decriminalization as well. Similarly, activists in Denton have collected enough signatures and once verified, they hope those will be added to the ballot as well. Finally, signature collectors have also collected enough signatures in Elgin.

In each of these cities, local officials on city councils can also enact these proposals as municipal legislation instead of voting measures, meaning legalization could spread even faster.

As Texas continues to slowly ramp up decriminalization, one city at a time, hearts and minds are changing and the mainstream talk of legalization is getting closer to becoming a statewide reality.

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