https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21733424-some-cities-plan-give-people-marijuana-convictions-priority-when-setting-up-legal
So about that so cal meet up lol
Besides California, seven other states and the District of Columbia have legalised the sale of recreational marijuana. But California is different in two ways. First is its size. With legalisation, California—the world’s sixth-largest economy—instantly became the largest legal market for recreational marijuana. A study by the University of California Agricultural Issues Centre at the University of California, Davis predicts that sales from recreational cannabis will eventually reach $5bn a year. The state already sells marijuana worth more than $2bn a year for medical purposes. For comparison, Colorado sold $1.3bn in total, for recreational and medical use, in 2016.
Second, perhaps unsurprisingly for a state seen as a Petri dish for socially liberal policy, California’s new regulations are notably progressive. For a start, they allow residents convicted of drug offences that would not be crimes under the new order to have their records expunged. Between November 2016, when Proposition 64 was passed, and September 2017, 4,885 Californians petitioned to reduce or void their convictions. Donnie Anderson, chairman of the California Minority Alliance, which champions people who have been harmed by drug criminalisation, applauds this initiative. “In the past, if you were white and caught with marijuana you would be let off. If you were black or Latino, you were not,” he says. A study by the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group, found that between 2001 and 2010 African-Americans were more than three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as white Americans, despite similar consumption rates.
California’s law also allows those convicted of past marijuana crimes to enter the cannabis industry. Jolene Forman of the Drug Policy Alliance, a pressure group, says this is ideal for two reasons. First, it allows people who have been operating black-market cannabis businesses to become legal. Second, it gives people harmed by the war on drugs the chance to profit in the legal cannabis industry.
With the revenue raised from recreational marijuana sales, California hopes to reduce some of the harms of criminalisation. After deductions for cannabis research and community programmes in the areas most affected by past marijuana policies, among other things, three-fifths of tax revenues from the purchase of recreational marijuana will go towards anti-addiction programmes and education about drug abuse. A fifth will go towards cleaning up environmental damage caused by illegal cannabis-growing. For comparison, the largest share of tax revenues in Oregon, another deeply progressive state, goes to a general education fund.
Some cities in the Golden State are taking things even further. In Los Angeles, residents with past marijuana convictions will not only be allowed to buy licences to sell the drug, but will be given priority. Under the city’s “social-equity programme”, low-income Angelenos who have previous marijuana convictions or who have lived in areas with disproportionately high rates of arrest for marijuana offences will be given preference when licences to open marijuana retail businesses are granted. Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento have introduced similar initiatives.
So about that so cal meet up lol