Two key House lawmakers sent a letter to the attorney general on Friday, condemning the recent expansion of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) authority amid mass protests and criticizing the agency’s objectives as out of step with the movement to legalize marijuana and reschedule other drugs.
A growing number of states have legalized or decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana. But the drug remains illegal in other states and under federal law – and police officers in the United States still make more arrests for marijuana offenses than for any other drug, according to FBI data.
Case in point, New York City police boasted on social media this week about what seemed like a significant drug bust: 106 pounds (48 kilograms) of funky, green plants that officers thought sure seemed like marijuana.
But the Vermont farm that grew the plants and the Brooklyn CBD shop that ordered them insisted they're actually industrial hemp, and perfectly legal. And, they said, they have paperwork to prove it.
NJTV News reports on the legislative struggles to get recreational marijuana legalized in the Garden State, including the criminal justice system implications. NJ lawmakers recently called off a vote to legalize adult-use recreational marijuana that would have also expunged the records of thousands of residents convicted of possession. At the same time, law enforcement concerns remain over how drugged driving will be detected.
Murphy hinted that he is now open to the idea of decriminalizing marijuana, which he had been staunchly opposed to before. He told host Nancy Solomon that because the status quo of having a disproportionately high number of racial minorities getting criminal records for small amounts of cannabis that it’s something, “we must consider.”
One of the first lessons I learned as a young prosecutor was also one of the most important: that our success is measured not by the number of people we convict, or the length of the prison sentences we obtain, but by whether justice is done in each and every case.
The increase in drug busts comes at a complex time for college campuses. Marijuana use is on the rise among college students nationwide as some states have legalized recreational use of weed and others, including New Jersey, are debating legalization. But marijuana use remains illegal in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, the opioid crisis continues to impact the state. A record-setting 3,163 people died of drug overdoses in New Jersey in 2018.
The campus crime reports do not specify what type of drugs were involved in each incident.