San Diego, California to Overturn Cannabis Convictions
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]A[/dropcap]s of Feb. 24, officials in San Diego, California are currently working to reduce or dismiss cannabis charges through the District Attorney’s office.
According to KSUI, the San Diego County District Attorney’s (DA) Office has filed to reduce 25,000 felony cannabis convictions to misdemeanors and dismiss 1,000 misdemeanors. So far, they have reduced or dismissed more than 1,600 of these charges since 2016.
The dismissals won’t be official until they have been approved by a judge, but many new cases will now be up for resentencing.
District Attorney Summer Stephan said that so far, the DA’s office has “been a leader in the state and proactive on giving individuals with marijuana convictions the opportunity to move forward with their lives without a conviction that may have been negatively impacting their lives by restricting their employment or housing.”
“This latest motion is the continuation of work that began more than two years ago,” she said. “It’s clear that the law was written to allow this relief, and it’s important that we give full effect to the will of the people.”
The dismissals took place one week after the official announcement by Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey that her office will dismiss nearly 66,000 cannabis convictions. Furthermore, some of these targeted convictions will go back as far as 1961.
San Diego isn’t the first place in California to be striving to free people from their cannabis convictions. The counties of San Francisco, Sacramento, San Joaquin and Contra Costa are also a part of the California Clear My Record pilot program.
It’s also not the first positive move California has made toward treating cannabis users better. They recently introduced a bill that would protect employees who use medical cannabis, and the state is also working on introducing cannabis lounges in some counties.
