Photo by Sean Keenan | The Signal
A traffic ticket in Clarkston could soon be more expensive than a fine for rolling around with weed in the car.
For first-time offenders, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana could result in a mere $5 fine if Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry’s ambitious proposal passes.
The proposal, known as the “A Ticket Only Offense,” would have law enforcement in the city treat first time possessors to a small municipal fine. Terry calls his plan a ‘re-prioritization’ of law enforcement resources, rather than decriminalization. For multiple offenses,Terry wishes for more of an educational approach, rather than a correctional one.
“The standard procedure would be to give close to a 600-1000 dollar ticket for possession (for an ounce or less), that’s a lot of money for a college student, we’re trying to have the punishment not be punitive,” Terry said.
“Right now the proposal looks like a low level fine, as little as $5, for the first offense,” he said. “But for second and third offenses and multiple offenses there would be a public health education component where someone would have to do mandated drug abuse screening assessments at the local public health department.”
For some students at Georgia State, the measure sounds promising, but not moving fast enough.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction but I think we should be doing more, as the state of Georgia, to move towards legalization,” said Nicholas Bello, Georgia State neuroscience student.
Sheryl Strasser, a Ph.D. student and associate professor of public health at Georgia State, and Dr. Ike Okosun, recently published a study on a link between smoking marijuana, cigarettes and cardiovascular conditions.
“We conducted a study which linked marijuana and tobacco usage over periods of time to increased development of metabolic disorders such as cardiovascular risk factors, hypertension, diabetes,” Okosun said.
The cross sectional study was based on National data, called NHANES which is clinical data from the government, but Okosun admits that it only accounted for how long someone had been smoking. “But we do not know the quantity,” he said. This is one of a few hiccups in the findings that raise further questions.
“We noticed that the higher the number of years you’ve been smoking the higher your chance of developing some of these cardiometabolic risk factors,” he said. “But the question that we are never be able to answer is that: is this the cause?” Okosun said he wishes to have access to more representative data before making conclusions.
Okosun upholds that though there are links between smoking marijuana and metabolic diseases there is not enough evidence to assert that smoking causes health problems and that further study is needed. “We’re going to have to do this type of study,” he said.
Due to the illegality of the drug, Okosun’s desire to conduct prospective studies may be relegated to the back burner for a while. With Georgia lawmakers making the availability of medical marijuana highly limited but for the treatment of a small handful of conditions, the prospect of changing things on a large scale seem slim.
“Our reading of the 1983 state laws upheld by the court of appeals 1997 gives concurrent jurisdiction to the municipal court system on how to punish one ounce of marijuana possession or under that, which basically means that the city council could pass a solution or a policy to send to the municipal court” Terry asserts.
A decision could be reached as soon as this month after a public safety committee meeting on April 22nd brought in expert witnesses who mostly supported the proposal.
As to whether a city can implement such a policy based on city council votes alone: a similar vote was overruled by the state in Kansas in which Wichita’s municipality had voted to reduce penalties earlier this year. What Georgia Legislature’s response will be is difficult to ascertain, considering how Nathan Deal opposes the move, according to the AJC.
Currently Ted Terry and Okosun both call for the same thing in the future: Evidence based policy.
