Ever since Texas passed the hemp law last year, law enforcement organizations across the state have struggled to sustain cannabis prohibition. Briefly, the passage of the hemp law meant that any cannabis product below 0.3% THC became legal, which forces police departments to pay for the expensive test needed to distinguish legal from illegal THC levels. In certain counties, such as my own here in Denton, the District Attorneys have simply decided not to prosecute low-level cannabis possession cases without those tests. This has produced an interesting situation for city councils and local law enforcement as they realize the power they hold in deciding how our community addresses cannabis use and criminal justice reform.
As we have seen in Austin, some city councils have wisely passed resolutions on cannabis decriminalization and yet these efforts are often stalled when they lack support from local law enforcement leadership. In contrast, Denton has recently embraced its first step in widespread criminal justice reform through police buy-in. On November 15th, the police chief of Denton, Frank Dixon, released a memo outlining the changes in police practices that have been implemented since the passage of the hemp law. Now, the city police will no longer arrest people found with up to an ounce of cannabis but will instead confiscate it along with a class C misdemeanor paraphernalia ticket.
Additionally, Chief Dixon has a plan to allow officers the ability to issue cite and release on many other misdemeanor crimes that are often disproportionately enforced on people experiencing homelessness or poverty such as trespass, public intoxication or low-level theft. In practice, this means that city police officers can exercise more discretion when deciding whether or not to let someone go with a ticket or make an arrest for various nonviolent offenses.
It should be noted that the context of this memo was somewhat bittersweet. Chief Dixon’s message was both to clarify the new changes in local enforcement of certain misdemeanors, as well as to argue against a city-wide moratorium on cannabis arrests that one city council member, Deb Armintor, had proposed but was unable to get the necessary support from the rest of the city council. Even though this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, the city police leadership still felt it necessary to explain why they believe that we should not support an outright moratorium on cannabis arrests. In essence, they claimed that getting rid of prohibitionist cannabis laws would make it more difficult for them to solve victim-based crimes since it would be harder for police to detain and search citizens.
However, this speaks to the clear need for more dialogue between different police departments across the country given that there are now many police forces operating in states with legalized cannabis or other forms of drug policy reform. We need law enforcement officials who are brave enough to break the thin blue line and come out in support of sensible criminal justice reforms. Moreover, we need these voices to speak up to other police departments and join us when proposing legislative changes, especially here in Texas and in other states that lack drug policy reform. For instance, one of the reasons why the Texas decriminalization bill died in the 2019 legislature was due to police associations, sheriff associations, and other state law enforcement groups that went to the Capitol to vehemently oppose that sensible policy change.
Due to my experience managing a local cannabis decriminalization campaign here in Denton for the past year and a half, I had already met with the police chief and district attorney before the former’s memo was posted. Since then, I was able to speak again with Chief Dixon about these changes made to our local criminal justice system. In our conversation he explained that his goal has not only been to implement important changes in city law enforcement but also to bring about criminal justice reform across Denton County. To accomplish that objective, he is looking for judges willing to create a new court that would be able to issue cite-and-release tickets for many nonviolent offenses and expand the penalty reduction of low-level cannabis possession throughout the county.
While we should certainly celebrate this small, incremental step towards criminal justice reform in our community, it is problematic that people can still be arrested and incarcerated for THC vape cartridges, edibles, concentrates, and virtually any other illegal psychoactive substance. Chief Dixon claims that state law prevents city police from not enforcing felony laws, which is exactly why we need to push our representatives to support legislation that would defelonize all drug use across the Lone Star State. Several other states have already successfully passed drug defelonization bills so we wouldn’t be alone. If Texas embraced similar reforms to eliminate incarceration for drug use, it is projected that our prisons would have 12,668 fewer people in them by 2025 and save our state $33.7 million over the period of a decade.
Given this context, we must use the growing political support for cannabis reform to not only advocate for cannabis decriminalization and legalization but also to start demanding sensible policy reforms that help people who use any type of mind-altering substance.