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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday October 04 2015, @11:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the lighten-up-man dept.

AlterNet reports

This week it was announced that Oregon will be expunging the old records of marijuana offenders, along with their new legalization plan. This measure is the farthest that a state has gone to date in regards to applying the new laws to old cases. However, for people who remain in jail for having a plant, the legalization plan does not go far enough.

According to the New York Times (paywall), people who have low-level felony or misdemeanor marijuana charges on their record that are at least ten years old will be eligible for expungement.

While the transition in Oregon is nowhere near what is needed for the hundreds of thousands who are still incarcerated, the aspect that allows for old cases to be expunged is at least a step in the right direction, and is helping people clear their records so they can avoid discrimination.

"Oregon is one of the first states to really grapple with the issue of what do you do with a record of something that used to be a crime and no longer is", law professor Jenny M. Roberts told the New York Times.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday October 05 2015, @07:57AM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Monday October 05 2015, @07:57AM (#245530) Journal

    Smoking pot is not a human rights issue the way that anti-miscegenation and anti-sodomy statutes were.

    Why not? What do you think the drug is about? http://newjimcrow.com/ [newjimcrow.com]

    Secondly, neither is smoking pot a crime against humanity, so why was the government making it illegal in the first place? If something should never have been illegal, don't you think that instead of telling the viciously convicted they have to suck it up, the government should be forced to (at the very least) apologize, if not make amends.

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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday October 05 2015, @08:06PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Monday October 05 2015, @08:06PM (#245796) Journal

    That line right before the link, that should be "what do you think the drug WAR is about?"