The decision that may change the dynamic of California

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/us/politics/02pot.html?ref=us

California Reduces Its Penalty for Marijuana

The New York Times

Jesse McKinley

This article is about the decision the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has made to reduce the penalty for someone who is found with an ounce or less of marijuana. The bill states that having up to an ounce of marijuana is liable to a fine of $100 and offenders wouldn’t be arrested or run the risk of having a criminal record. Schwarzenegger defended passing this bill by stating that normally being charged with possession of marijuana is a misdemeanor which requires the defendant to have a jury trial and because of budget cuts many court officials can’t spend limited resources trying to prosecute a crime that has the same punishment as a traffic ticket.

The headline of this story grabbed my attention because it makes the reader think that marijuana is on its way to becoming legalized in California and maybe that will soon start happening in other states around the country. The lead of the story is very short and to point because it tells the reader that now getting caught with marijuana in California doesn’t have a harsh punishment as before. The sources made this story because they included the Governor himself and the California state director for the Drug Policy Alliances, other sources that could have been used are member of the police force to see how they feel this new law will affect the streets of California and citizens of California to see how they feel about the new law that has been put into place. This article could have used some statistics on the percentage of people who are arrested with possession of marijuana up to one ounce and how long it takes to prosecute these crimes to show readers how big of an impact this new law would have on the state of California. This story uses human interest because a lot of people are interested in knowing whether this new law may start popping up in different states.

I chose this article because I found it very interesting that slowly but surely possession of marijuana is becoming less and less of an infraction in the legal system. It was interesting to see that this new law was passed in California and the possibility of a law like this passing in another state seems a little higher now. As a teenager in our modern day society where marijuana is a very acceptable drug it was interesting to imagine how a bill like this is going to affect the people of California and the United States as a whole.