cannabisnews.com: Up in Smoke





Up in Smoke
Posted by CN Staff on January 08, 2004 at 08:41:46 PT
By Victoria Edwards, Daily Staff Reporter
Source: Michigan Daily 
In Ann Arbor, the difference between getting up to a year in jail and a simple $50 ticket for the use of marijuana can depend wholly on which police agency issues the citation. Ann Arbor passed an ordinance in 1972 that decriminalized the use of marijuana, making it the only city in Michigan with such an ordinance.The Ann Arbor Police Department can enforce the city ordinance with a $50 ticket in its jurisdiction, which comprises the city of Ann Arbor outside of University property.
By contrast, the Department of Public Safety, the University’s police force, must enforce state law rather than city ordinance — punishing marijuana use with up to 90 days in jail on all University property. Possession can land the lawbreaker in jail for up to a year, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Joseph Burke said.“If AAPD encounters someone on U of M property, they call DPS and we’ll respond and take over,” DPS Lt. Bob Neumann said.The issue of marijuana use becomes even more blurry on property adjacent to the University. In areas such as State Street, where both DPS and AAPD have jurisdiction, either agency can catch offenders and write tickets according to their separate edicts.An LSA sophomore who wished to remain anonymous said he made the mistake of possessing marijuana on University property. Due to DPS’s enforcement of the harsher state law, he said he has paid sorely for it.When DPS cites an individual for the use or possession of marijuana, the offender appears in court for having committed a misdemeanor. Ann Arbor’s decriminalization law does not apply in such cases.The sophomore said DPS caught him smoking marijuana in his dorm room with his friends.“I was the only one with pot in my possession. They said it would be between six to eight weeks before I heard from them again because they had to send the pot to the lab. I got the citation over Thanksgiving break about seven months after it happened,” he said.He added that his case was somewhat unique. Besides being caught for marijuana possession, he also got a citation for being a minor in possession of alcohol, for substances found in his room.“My parents don’t know I’m going through this at all. … It is so stressful. I wish I knew my punishment and it could all be over. It is not going away — I’m going to court for the pre-trial, then in another month I will be sentenced and I will probably be on probation for a year,” he said.By comparison, the AAPD’s ticket process falls lightly on possessors and users, as illustrated by the case one 21-year-old Ann Arbor resident cited by the AAPD for possessing pot.“I had smoked a roach and I was rolling a joint, about 0.7 or 0.8 grams of pot. I got possession, not use of pot, which was a ticket for $50,” he said.He added that he views the city ordinance on marijuana as somewhat of a joke because of the light punishment that it gives marijuana use.“I just wonder how many times an Ann Arbor officer would give me a ticket for smoking a joint on the corner of South University Avenue and East University Avenue before he took me to jail,” he said.Assistant City Attorney Robert West said that the AAPD can issue a person an unlimited number of tickets for marijuana use, but no amount of tickets can lead to jailtime.Still, depending on how the perpetrator intends to use the marijuana, the Ann Arbor police can enforce harsh penalties. Ann Arbor’s decriminalization ordinance does not pertain to persons who possess the drug with intent to deliver. Trafficking, by the AAPD’s code or by DPS’s, is a felony carrying up to four years in prison.In addition, Washtenaw County police and state police follow Michigan law for marijuana use and possession, without regard to Ann Arbor’s decriminalization ordinance.Note: Penalties for marijuana differ for on and off campus weed infractions.Source: Michigan Daily (MI Edu)Author:  Victoria Edwards, Daily Staff ReporterPublished: January 08, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Michigan DailyContact: daily.letters umich.eduWebsite: http://www.michigandaily.com/CannabisNews -- NORML Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #6 posted by gloovins on January 08, 2004 at 17:04:20 PT
some poss talking points for this 
When people ask tell them you want a safe alternative from alcohol, that is : cannabis/hemp. There is no reports of overdose, as there are DAILY with booze. You eventually will have a choice to run your CAR on it, are you listening Motor City? (or are you scared $hitless is the real question), because them fossil fuels are on their way out -- esp. in places like Calif and the west. We/They want a CHOICE at least at the pump. They can convert, see hempcar.org or veggievan.com. Get with the real trend. The alcohol/tobacco companies jam their product down your throat & they are both ADMITTED killers of people. Cannabis is not. Do you really want your tax dollars paying for jailing one for possesing, buying a PLANT? Just a question.Happy New Year all btw I post this because today Jan 8th marks the signature drive date. Michigan, I believe will not end up like Nevada w/ 39%. Its a different time now and Michigan is a very progressive state. Nevada is run by casino revenue basically. At least politics & issues like cannabis take a back seat to that $ interest imho. stay well all & if you know any voter in Michigan alert them to this amendment signature drive. Hopefully, they see the light and sign. 
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Comment #5 posted by gloovins on January 08, 2004 at 16:39:32 PT
opps until 
July 5 2004 .sorry new year new brain..haha
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Comment #4 posted by gloovins on January 08, 2004 at 16:38:10 PT
It could all change MI residents....
Sign now Mich residents have until July 5 2003 to do so
Amend the Michigan Constitution in 2004
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Comment #3 posted by SystemGoneDown on January 08, 2004 at 09:12:51 PT
Congress...
It's stories like these that should be putting massive pressure on Congress to hurry up and pass a bill decriminalizing 'the shi t'. Suddenly, a misdemeanor criminal record for possession can be reduced to a petty fine if your two feet are on a certain section when your smoking it. WoW...There is nothing more PATHETIC in this country than our marijuana laws. It's almost laughable if you couldn't actually get your record fucd because of possession. Makes no sense...
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Comment #2 posted by goneposthole on January 08, 2004 at 09:12:43 PT
where have I heard this stuff before?
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_071600_prohibitiona.htm"...Within a few years, dry legislatures were favoring women's suffrage and allowing popular referenda on the question of whether states should prohibit saloons. To many voters—frightened by the common knowledge that increasing competition among saloons encouraged crime and political corruption, and by the psychologists and neurologists whose research indicated that alcohol was in fact an addictive poison—there was then no more important political question. By 1916, twenty-one states had banned saloons. National elections that year returned a Congress in which dry members outnumbered the wets two-to-one. In December 1917, Congress submitted to the states the Eighteenth Amendment, which, when ratified in 1919, placed in the Constitution a nationwide ban on the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." By that time most of the states had been dry for years. In 1920, the Volstead Act was to most Americans a belated confirmation of an earlier reality.For several years after 1920, the illicit manufacture and sale of alcohol, if not entirely eliminated, was at least inconspicuous. Many people who regarded themselves as victims of a bewildering law and expected regularly to violate it nevertheless praised it as a high-minded achievement for the next generation. But most people probably wanted to obey the law and were curious about the emerging character of the dry rather than the alcoholic republic. They rejoiced that arrests for drunkenness declined sharply, along with the cost of maintaining prisons, and that medical statistics recorded a drop in the number of treatments for diseases associated with alcoholic psychoses. It is reasonably certain that many drinkers drank considerably less—especially if they were wage earners—if only because of the high cost of bootleg beers and liquors. (Between 1916 and 1928, the price of whiskey in most places rose by an average of 520 percent.)Although determining the extent of drinking by any group at that time is difficult, Prohibition was at least partly effective. Records show that annual per capita consumption stood at 2.60 gallons for the period 1906 to 1910, before state dry laws had much impact. In 1934, when accurate statistics were again available, the figure was less than a gallon, and even as late as 1945, it was only 2 gallons. Not until 1975 did per capita consumption rise again to what it had been before Prohibition.But at some time near the middle of the 1920s it became abundantly clear that "Volsteadism" was presenting enormous, if not intolerable problems. Stopping the illegal traffic seemed impossible. Few political leaders had realistic plans for funding a naval blockade of the coasts or for closing the thousands of miles of borders along Canada and Mexico. Nor were elected officials inclined to pay for the huge police forces necessary to restrict the bootlegging that became pandemic, or to monitor the distillation of medical alcohol, which flowed easily into illicit outlets, or to track the production of sacramental wines, which so easily found secular markets. Token raids on speakeasies by federal agents usually encouraged colorful newspaper stories rather than respect for federal law. In fact, after 1925, more and more citizens seemed to resent the cynicism with which the federal government (whose Founding Fathers had left murders, lynchings, adulteries, and other moral transgressions to the disciplines of the state legislatures) was so inconsistently pursuing an intrusive interest in whatever it was they might be tempted to drink.Congress had placed the matter within the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, whose untrained Prohibition officers faced challenges that would have defeated entire armies and navies. They operated with ineffective budgets—if any at all could have been effective—and only slight approval by the public. Even their friends in the Anti-Saloon League began to feel that, having made Prohibition the law of the land, they should employ their lagging energies and resources in the interest of propaganda and education, not law enforcement. Congress seemed to agree: it allowed Prohibition for the most part to live or die in the public conscience."
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Comment #1 posted by ekim on January 08, 2004 at 09:05:30 PT
Arbor passed an ordinance in 1972 --32 yr sucess
I would like to see a cost benefit study on how this ticket law has saved tax payer money for less jail use --less court time taken -- and the most important issue in Ann Arbor is how a criminal record will cost the student a loss of a Fed loan, while the ticket law will not. Seems that these issues would come to the attention of this writer as the Gov has had to cut billions for needed programs in the State as MI along with all States are in the Red. 
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