San Francisco will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions

SAN FRANCISCO —  San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1975, the district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

Nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to Proposition 64’s passage will be dismissed and sealed, Dist. Attorney George Gascón said. The move will clear people’s records of crimes that can be barriers to employment and housing.

Proposition 64 legalizes, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allows individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allows people convicted of marijuana possession crimes eliminated by Proposition 64 to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged from their records as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety.

They also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.

“While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country’s disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular,” Gascón said in a statement. “Long ago we lost our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance, and it has broken our pocket books, the fabric of our communities, and we are no safer for it.”

As of September, 4,885 Californians have petitioned the courts to have marijuana convictions expunged or reclassified, but many people don’t know about the process, which can be difficult, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which supported Proposition 64.

“So instead of waiting for the community to take action, we’re taking action for the community,” Gascón said.

A 2016 study by New Frontier Data, a data analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry, found “stark racial disparities in California’s marijuana-related jail population.” Black, Latino and white people all consume and sell marijuana at similar rates, the research found, but black Californians are jailed for marijuana-only offenses at much high rates — nearly one-quarter of people jailed for those offenses are black.

In a statement, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the move provides “new hope and opportunities to Californians, primarily people of color, whose lives were long ago derailed by a costly, broken and racially discriminatory system of marijuana criminalization.”

Although nearly 75 percent of San Franciscans voted to legalize marijuana, only 23 petitions for Proposition 64 reduction, dismissal or expungement have been filed over the past year, the district attorney’s office said, adding that it does not have any active marijuana prosecutions.