The Carlisle Borough Council hopes to have a draft ordinance to decriminalize marijuana ready for its November meeting.
If comments from borough council members at a workshop meeting Wednesday are any indication, the measure would likely pass.
Councilman Jeff Stuby suggested the borough look into decriminalization at the September borough council meeting, saying that the “criminalization of cannabis has proven itself a failure” and that the law against possession of a small amount of marijuana disproportionately affects Black people.
Stuby created a rough draft of a potential ordinance based on those in effect in other municipalities. Regionally, Harrisburg, York, Steelton and Lancaster have decriminalized marijuana.
“I do think we have a template that we can follow moving the possession of cannabis, the possession of cannabis paraphernalia, and then smoking cannabis in a public location from a misdemeanor offense to a summary offense that would then have a fine attached to it as opposed to the possibility for arrest,” Stuby said.
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That draft has been turned over to the borough solicitor and borough staff for review. They will are to bring a revised draft to the November council meeting for public view and continued discussion by the council.
Deputy Mayor Sean Shultz requested the staff also provide data that would help the council to balance the pros and cons of decriminalization as well as to see what it means “on the street” in terms of law enforcement.
“I’m quite aware of the statistics nationwide. I imagine they bear out pretty similarly here, but I’d like to see that,” he said.
Data released by the Carlisle Police Department in July shows that Blacks accounted for half of the 34 arrests in 2019 for small amounts of marijuana for personal use while constituting 7.6% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Blacks are roughly four times more likely than whites to be arrested for such offenses nationally, according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We’re looking at a situation that doesn’t make any kind of sense,” councilwoman Deb Fulham-Winston said.
Fulham-Winston also said that Pennsylvania has essentially testified that marijuana is safe by allowing the use of medical marijuana.
“It seems incredibly hypocritical to continue to criminalize the use and possession of small amounts of marijuana,” she said.
“We have situations in our borough where a neighbor with a medical card is fine and their next door neighbor will be cited at a higher offense while the neighbor with a medical card will not be cited,” councilman Sean Crampsie said.
Councilman Joel Hicks wanted to make it clear that the borough is not promoting the use of marijuana, saying that decriminalization is a different issue.
“This is not about promoting cannabis. This is about treating it for what it really is and treating it for what the relative harm is or is not relative to a person’s permanent record,” he said.
Shultz said the war on drugs “has been a pretty ineffective mess for the last 80-90 years,” and should be addressed at the federal level or even the state level.
“The action’s not happening there so we need to consider what we can do at this level,” he said.
Mayor Tim Scott advocated a pilot program for decriminalization that would allow the borough to collect data that could be reviewed to determine how decriminalization continues.
“If you are a fan of criminal justice reform, this is where it starts. This is how we can make our mark on that,” he said.