“Small possession of marijuana is not the type of violation that we want to stockpile jails with,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday.
As greater numbers of Texas voters sour on harsh punishment for marijuana offenses, Austin voters will likely decide in November whether to effectively decriminalize the drug.
The ballot measure, pushed by the group Ground Game Texas, would forbid Austin police officers in most cases from ticketing or arresting people on low-level pot charges like possessing small amounts of the drug or related paraphernalia — unless the offenses are tied to more severe crimes. The city also would not pay to test substances suspected to be marijuana — a key step in substantiating drug charges.
Both practices have already been informally adopted in Austin, but advocates want to solidify them at the November ballot box.
“The primary effect is that it would make the decriminalization that exists in Austin today actually long term and would put the force of law behind it,” said Chris Harris, policy director at Austin Justice Coalition.
Austin law enforcement has met the idea with varying degrees of hostility and indifference in recent years. After the Austin City Council informally asked the Police Department in 2020 to halt citations and arrests for misdemeanor marijuana charges, then-Chief Brian Manley said the council doesn’t have the authority to tell him not to enforce state law. And officers still have latitude to decide whether to make arrests and write citations.
Chief Joseph Chacon has been mum on the current proposal. A representative for the Austin Police Department did not return a request for comment Monday.
And the Austin Police Association, the union that represents Austin officers, is staying out of the ballot fight — but not because it’s happy with the idea.
But the measure faces one big obstacle: Although marijuana laws in Texas have loosened somewhat in recent years, the drug remains illegal at the state level.
Public support for harsh marijuana laws and prosecutors’ willingness to bring charges for minor offenses has waned in recent years.
The number of new charges for misdemeanor marijuana possession fell by 59% from 2016 to 2020, according to figures from the Texas Office of Court Administration, as prosecutors in the state’s major urban areas have increasingly deprioritized marijuana prosecutions.
Most Texas voters support decriminalizing marijuana in some form. Three-fifths of Texas voters say at least a small amount of marijuana should be legal, according to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll last year.
That support cuts across partisan lines. Nearly three-fourths of Democrats and independents think marijuana should be legal. So do 43% of Republicans, a plurality of that group.
It’s against that backdrop that Ground Game Texas — a progressive group focused…
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