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Leafly.com reports:
[On Thursday] the United States' capital, Washington D.C. (not to be confused with the state of Washington, which debuted its retail stores last week), officially decriminalizes cannabis. Under the new law, police officers can no longer demand identification from people caught possessing up to one ounce of cannabis, nor can they arrest people if they simply smell cannabis on them. Instead, they will confiscate any "visible contraband" and issue a ticket with a fine of $25.
Possession of amounts greater than one ounce can still result in arrest and being charged with a crime, but this is still a small victory for D.C. residents, especially blacks, who are being penalized and face having their lives ruined over a small amount of cannabis. Now how's about you look into legalization next, Nation's Capital?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:24PM
> Moreover, where I come from, dark-skinned people have no more trouble than light-skinned people avoiding a life of crime.
You must not come from the USA.
In the USA blacks and whites use pot at roughly the same rates and yet the rates of arrest for pot are 3x-10x higher for blacks. [washingtonpost.com]
If you think that going to prison does not make it significantly harder to avoid a life a crime, you haven't been paying attention to how society treats ex-convicts.