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Miami Beach Voters Could See Marijuana Decriminalization on November
Ballot
An effort to decriminalize marijuana in Miami Beach kicked off Wednesday
evening when a local group held a news conference in front of City Hall
to launch a petition drive. The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy
is collecting signatures to place the marijuana decriminalization
amendment on the November ballot.
If voters approve the amendment, it would make possession of 20 grams or
less of marijuana a civil infraction rather than a misdemeanor crime,
for which state law calls for up to a year in jail and $1,000 in fines.
Under the proposal, punishment of "personal possession'' would be a $100
fine. The amendment will also increase the discretion of the State
Attorney to permit a plea to a civil infraction where appropriate.
"The sum total effect of 72 years of marijuana prohibition and more than
twenty million arrests since 1965 is that marijuana is now the largest
cash crop in the United States and probably the most economically
valuable agricultural commodity produced in the State of Florida," said
Ford Banister, Chairman of the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy.
"According to a recent report by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron,
Florida spends $573,366,000 annually on wholly ineffectual efforts to
eradicate marijuana, a substance that every objective study has
determined to be far less harmful than alcohol." That's the second focus of the committee. It is stressing a
marijuana is
safer than alcohol campaign that asserts marijuana is less addictive,
less toxic and less likely to lead to violence than alcohol.
The group, supported in part by a grant from the Miami film studio
Rakontur, must collect 4,240 valid signatures by the end of August, to
qualify the measure for the November ballot. "We are confident that the progressive and enlightened citizens of Miami
Beach will agree that it's time we stop driving people to drink with
excessive penalties for the use of a far safer substance," Banister
said. "And if they do not yet know how much safer marijuana is than
alcohol and the savings garnered by ending a failed policy, we will be
working hard to educate them over the course of this campaign."
The Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy is a political action
committee that has successfully lobbied for marijuana decriminalization
laws in Massachusetts and it is also behind efforts to decriminalize
marijuana possession in Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Orlando and
Tallahassee. |
