For the second time, the Albuquerque City Council will vote on a bill to decriminalize marijuana. This new development comes after an overwhelming citizen vote that showed the majority of Albuquerque residents support decriminalization.
Albuquerque City Councilors Rey Garduño and Isaac Benton will introduce a bill to decriminalize marijuana on Sept. 9 with full council consideration taking place on Sept. 21.
Garduño, president of the Council, said the ordinance, if passed, will make possession of an ounce or less of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia a civil infraction, with a fine of $25.
A civil infraction is not considered a criminal conviction, so the ordinance also takes away the possibility of jail time, he said.
“Let’s not criminalize people who are not causing or creating a crime,” he said. “They are merely imbibing something that is, I think, wrongfully illegal.”
Last year, a similar measure was brought up for consideration and passed with a five-to-four vote, he said.
However, once it reached mayor Berry, it was vetoed.
Garduño said that the members of the Council who voted against it, as well as Mayor Berry, did so because they didn’t know how their constituents felt and didn’t want to vote for something that the public may not support.
A citywide vote in November showed, to the contrary, that 62 percent of voters want marijuana decriminalized.
“I expect it to not only pass, but pass by a large margin,” Garduño said. “There wasn’t a single district in the whole city that was not over 50 percent. In fact, 52 percent was the lowest, district by district.”
With the 62 percent vote, those on the Council who voted against it should recognize that it is something the public supports, and should vote for it this time around, he said.
“It will benefit the individual by not criminalizing that person,” he said.
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Garduño said that as well as the individual, it will also help the city, “so that it doesn’t clog up the court system, it doesn’t incarcerate people, which is expensive, and it doesn’t disrupt people’s lives for such a small infraction.”
According to the website for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), there were 3,198 arrests in 2012 for marijuana possession in New Mexico, taken from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.
“I’ve said, and continue to say, that incarcerating people for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana or paraphernalia is creating criminals where there is no crime,” Garduño said. “It’s an infraction — let’s just take care of it that way.”
He said it will also unburden police from having to incarcerate for such a small infraction.
“When we are taking policemen off the street, another issue, another more important issue, is not being taken care of because they are dealing with something that is so low-priority,” he said.
Garduño said he could imagine no drawbacks to decriminalization. “None whatsoever.”
“Most of the time, people that have such a small amount of marijuana are not drug dealers, are not people we should be wary of,” he said.
Another thing Garduño considered are the individuals who are burdened and hurt by incarceration.
“Those that get a record, that are young, endure an inordinate amount of penalty by carrying that record for the rest of their lives,” he said.
Garduño said that marijuana’s ongoing illegality only encourages larger crime activity through illicit distribution, such as cartels.
“They love the fact that it’s illegal,” he said. “It’s a sure way to price their merchandise at the highest level possible.”
Garduño concluded that legalizing marijuana will benefit New Mexico as a state.
“I think that we, as a state, would then be able to gain by being able to tax that merchandise,” he said. As far as benefits from taxing marijuana, Garduño hopes that money could go to education, among other things, he said.
“This is the first step, but I would hope that the state would follow with decriminalizing, like 38 other states have,” he said. “Also, I think that nationally, it should be legalized. We’re going through sort of, a protracted prohibition that happened in the ’20s with liquor.”
Matthew Reisen is a senior reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
