Dennis RomeroA state law intended to decriminalize holding minor amounts of weed appears to have done just that.
On Tuesday we told you how arrests of juveniles in California plummeted by 20 percent, largely due to a drop in marijuana violations. The next day the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) reported a 10-year low in marijuana arrests for 2011.
The association blamed it on …
… SB 1449, the state law that reduces minor pot possession to a cite-and-release (ticket-writing) misdemeanor in most cases.
According to SANDAG there was a 90 percent decrease in San Diego County weed arrests in 2011 compared to the previous year.
The law, which went into effect in January, meant that …
Credit: Payton / Flickr
… following this change, the number of misdemeanor-level arrests for marijuana offenses in the region plummeted to 703 last year, down from 6,786 in 2010.
Adult arrests for marijuana were actually down a whopping 98 percent, says SANDAG. (For juveniles the reductions was a milder 57 percent).
According to the association:
Approximately half of adult arrests were for alcohol and drug-related offenses.
Smoke on that.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.