For once, Austin has a good idea. Fort Worth should follow its lead on marijuana cases
Updated at 5:30 p.m. to reflect Austin City Council vote.
Look up. Notice that the sky hasn’t fallen.
Texas hasn’t suddenly become a more dangerous place to live, even though prosecutions for possessing small amounts of marijuana have been slashed more than in half since the state’s new law legalizing hemp has caused confusion for police departments and district attorneys.
City Council members in Austin have noticed, and on Thursday, they voted unanimously to effectively end prosecution low-level marijuana cases.
“If there’s no intent to sell or distribute, we’re not going to mess with it,” Greg Casar, the proposal’s lead sponsor, told the Texas Tribune.
Fort Worth should do the same. When the extent of the problem distinguishing marijuana from hemp became clear, we urged the city to experiment with de facto decriminalization. Now, it’s time to go a step further.
Fort Worth police say they’ve been handling cases individually, as circumstances merit. But it’s clear that arrests for small amounts of pot are way down.
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Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson’s office has declined to prosecute cases without expensive lab tests confirming that a substance is marijuana, though Wilson’s spokeswoman said marijuana charges are still the top misdemeanor charge
The issue is the need to test a substance for THC, the active ingredient that gives a cannabis user a high. If a plant contains more than 0.3% THC, it’s marijuana, and thus still illegal in Texas. But if it has less, it’s hemp, which the Legislature made legal last year without considering if state crime labs could conduct tests that distinguish the two.
Police and prosecutors reacted with common sense. WFAA-TV reports that after the law took effect in June, the state averaged fewer than 2,000 misdemeanor marijuana cases a month, compared with an average of 5,600 a month in the first five months of 2019.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is getting closer to having the necessary equipment. A Fort Worth police spokesman said the city is still working on whether to buy equipment to test marijuana, at an expected cost of about $250,000. In misdemeanor cases, evidence collected is “tagged for later analysis,” so future prosecutions are possible. That’s why the City Council needs to weigh in soon.
Texans are open-minded about legalization of marijuana, but the prudent course would be to take it slowly. Now that we have an idea of how little harm comes from prosecuting fewer simple possession cases, we can expand the experiment.
Some will object that police shouldn’t take a hands-off approach to any crime. But in reality, enforcement priorities are set all the time. Felony cases involving dealers could still be prosecuted. And though we don’t expect this, if the policy becomes problematic, reversing it won’t be hard.
As for full-blown legalization, that’s something the Legislature must consider. It’s wise to go slow and consider what’s happening in other states. Let the data collect on related criminal activity, banking issues and health concerns.
Fort Worth and other cities, though, have plenty of information to move ahead on abandoning misdemeanor possession cases.
This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 5:02 AM.