Proposition 207 could potentially expunge people convicted of certain marijuana-related crimes in addition to making the drug fully legal in the state of Arizona if passed.
The proposition, which will be voted on in the upcoming November election, would allow people to petition to clear their permanent records that include crimes of marijuana possession, consumption, cultivation and transportation.
This expungement would not extend to criminals currently doing time in a state prison or county jail, but after serving their sentence, they would be able to file for a petition if they meet the criteria.
A similar proposition was introduced in the 2016 election, with Proposition 205, but was narrowly denied in a 51-48 vote.
The Smart and Safe Arizona Initiative has been running the campaign and said Proposition 207 “frees up police to focus on real crime and hard drugs and unclogs the justice system which is currently backlogged with minor offenses.”
Jeff Hawkins, the president of the Arizona State Troopers Association, said he, like Gov. Doug Ducey, opposes the proposition strongly as well as the idea of clearing permanent records.
“I wouldn’t agree to expunging every marijuana-related drug case because there would be a myriad of cases,” Hawkins said. “If you got convicted of it, it wasn’t decriminalized when you did the offense.”
According to the Pew Research Center, “Police officers made about 663,000 arrests for marijuana-related offenses in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2018, amounting to 40% of the 1.65 million total drug arrests in the U.S. that year.”
In Arizona, roughly 12% of all arrests are for drug-related crimes, and a little more than half are for marijuana-related crimes, which totals between 16,000 and 17,000.
This kind of policing and the strong push to criminalize marijuana was not seen until the Nixon administration during its proposed War on Drugs in the early 1970s.
Hawkins said that these numbers will only increase with the problems that will arise if this proposition is passed. He said police based in states where marijuana is already fully legal, like Washington or Colorado—the two “pioneers,” as he called them—have struggled to enforce the laws put in place because they did not have the staff to do so.
Some of the association’s biggest concerns are increased car crashes from driving under the influence, easy marijuana access for young kids, property devaluation, and the influx of illegal growers in Arizona.
The state troopers currently have over 300 vacancies and Hawkins said this leaves them with little resources and few ways to combat these potential issues.
“Is it going to go unchecked? Is it going to become an organized crime issue? Are the cartels going to move into our state of Arizona? Absolutely they are,” Hawkins said. “They are going to take over neighborhoods.”
Hawkins said that these are things that many people do not think about because they are not in the law enforcement network, and legalizing marijuana will not bring anything positive to the community.
“It’s a way to make a quick buck really fast and it’s far-reaching…It’ll become the Wild West,” Hawkins said.
Ben McJunkin, an Associate Professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law, has a different perspective on Proposition 207 and sees a certain upside to it.
McJunkin said that by decriminalizing behavior that is non-violent and that doesn’t have substantial harmful effects on other people, number of incidences that police and citizens need to interact will be reduced.
He said that this will decrease the potential for escalations that could lead to serious injury or death because some of the most high-profile instances of citizen deaths at the hands of the police in recent years come from relatively minor crimes.
“There’s absolutely no reason that the full use of police forces are needed to investigate possession of six marijuana plants or an ounce of marijuana,” McJunkin said. “That just seems like bringing a gun to a knife fight.”
Proposition 207 also plans to put a 16% tax on marijuana sales. The money from the taxes will be put back into the community, helping to support community colleges and police and fire departments.
McJunkin said people who want to use marijuana are already using it because they are not efficiently deterred, so it is important to “shift the lens” in a way that will benefit our state.
“Right now, we are spending money as a society to investigate, to arrest, and to ultimately lock people up over marijuana,” McJunkin said. “But [this] instead turns it around to something that generates revenue that can be invested in various social programs that might be needed to benefit our communities.”
Contact the reporter at mphammel@asu.edu.
"The Flexible Journalist" -
Hammel is a fourth-year student studying broadcast journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite college in an accelerated bachelor's-master's program. She is currently the Executive Editor for The Downtown Devil - a publication that covers hyperlocal news in the downtown Phoenix area - and is always looking for ways to improve her reporting and news writing skills—behind the camera and in front of it.
Hammel is also a certified yoga instructor at the Sun Devil Fitness Complex; she is flexible physically as well as in a way that allows her to be able to cover any news story that will educate the public, encourage civil discourse and impact communities.
