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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

> As written, I-301 directs police via ordinance to treat enforcement of laws against possession of psilocybin mushrooms as their lowest priority ... Psychedelic mushrooms still would remain illegal to buy, sell or possess ... Initiative 301 backers hope to lower the risk users face of getting caught with mushrooms.

So "decriminalize" seems to be the wrong word since it's just as criminal as before. Better would be "deprioritize".

> The past marijuana efforts are instructive, though. Denver voters signed off on decriminalization measures in 2005 and 2007, but that didn’t stop police from enforcing the law

So even deprioritization is more hope than accomplishment.

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That's what decriminalization means:

> In a federal country, acts may be decriminalized by one level of government while still subject to penalties levied by another; for example, possession of a decriminalized drug may still be subject to criminal charges by one level of government, but another may yet impose a monetary fine. This should be contrasted with legalization, which removes all or most legal detriments from a previously illegal act.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decriminalization

Huh? Decriminalization would be the state declaring that possessing Psilocybin is not illegal under state law. Directing law enforcement to de-prioritize it is not the same thing.

Decriminalization means that the lowest misdemeanor is replaced by a civil citation or confiscation.

You might still have to pay a fine like a traffic ticket, but it's not a criminal charge or an arrest.

It's also still illegal to purchase but you won't be charged for doing so.

How does this work if someone on for example a green card got caught and cited for possession? Since it’s still a violation of controlled substances act would it affect a citizenship application?

Yes, federal law applies for immigrants.

To add a bit more - there are no city/county criminal laws in the United States, only state and federal. But we have Federal, State, City, and County law enforcement officers. So Denver is working to de-prioritize/“decriminalize” for in-city law enforcement officers. I imagine state police and federal officers would not pay too much attention to this if it goes through.

Also, a city has no ability to decriminalize something, as that would have to be done by the state legislature or a statewide vote. So this is really not “decriminalizing” at all... the initiative itself uses the word “deprioritize”: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bb4f9c27046803ce123a...

Edit: word choice.

> Decriminalization would be the state declaring that possessing Psilocybin is not illegal under state law

No, that'd be outright legalization.

"Decriminalization" would be instructing law enforcement to not ever enforce a law - stronger than deprioritizing, but weaker than legalizing.

It could also include not explicitly criminalizing or legalizing something (that is: Denver could simply not mention psychedelic mushrooms at all), but in this case there's already a higher-level jurisdiction (i.e. the United States) that does explicitly criminalize it, so a lack of specificity would in this case just mean criminalization.

What's the difference between ignoring a law and deleting it?

A city can't delete a federal law. A city can tell its police department(s) to ignore a federal law (in the sense that it's physically and logically possible, not in the sense of it actually being legal; I'm not sure if the federal government has the power to compel local police forces to enforce federal laws).

Local police are not required to enforce federal law, essentially. They can, if they want -- it's the highest law in the land -- but the obligation is on the Federal Gov to enforce their own laws, hence the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.

"Decriminalizing" just means the local police will not enforce the law as written, and if the state or Feddy'Gov doesn't like it then they can send state troopers or DEA agents to hang out on every block in Denver to make sure the law gets followed and shroomers get nailed. Contrary to popular belief, the FBI and DEA don't have unlimited resources, and have bigger fish to fry... so nothing happens most of the time.

In the event the local Denver cops do nail you with shrooms, instead of enforcing the law they'll nail you with a fine or something. No idea what the CO State Troopers are up to, or if they'll be acting in Denver against the decrim bill.

Decriminalize is not equivalent to legalize as generally used. For example [1] titled "14 states have decriminalized — but not legalized — marijuana"

Do you have a better word for localities whom do not have the authority to make something legal to effectively do so by directing law enforcement and prosecutors to not pursue a certain offense?

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/20/17938358/marijuana-...

Decriminalisation != legalisation

IANAL but my understanding is that there are different types of "offences", some of them are "criminal offences" (e.g. theft, assault), others are just "offences" (e.g. speeding). Conviction of the latter do not result in a criminal record, and usually attract lower pernalties.

NYC similarly deprioritized marijuana in 2014 but what happened in practice was only minorities were getting arrested during 'stop and frisk' searches in the subway. Now arrests are back up to what they were before.

It's actually kind of a clusterfuck.

yeah its really awkward when surveys show one distribution of illegal drug use across all races and socioeconomic classes

but then you see a completely different distribution about who gets arrested for it, and it is very disproportionate

all for some edgelord to say "but they commit all the crimes its fact see" and its really like everyone commits crimes, which is a depressing standard from one lens but even more depressing that one group simply doesn't get the privilege of doing illegal things because they'll actually get arrested for it

This paper(1) is by a Black economist at Harvard. On page 5, Blacks are 25% less likely to be shot, though they are more likely to experience non-lethal force. The paper concludes there are a minority of officers who discriminate.

I was quite surprised by that.

I also was curious about that because it didn't match my preconceived notions, so did a rough check of some of the crime stats myself(2). It seems about 25% of fatal shootings are of Blacks, which is about proportionately double the rate. But if you look at something like arrest rate for violent crime as a metric for encounters with police, they're a little bit over 25%, which would be consistent with the former paper's conclusion.

I have no doubt that in the past there was terrible discrimination, and that presently a minority of officers do it, which is still unacceptable. But whenever I see people talking about this topic presently, I never see facts or statistics brought into it and it comes off as hand-wavey virtue signalling.

1- http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399

2- https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Today we are talking about drug use and arrest frequency

And you are talking about perceived demographics of police brutality. Are you not signaling with your essay and predilection to post stats on something nobody was talking about?

Sure if you had the stats folder with pdfs and links to contribute to the parent post that would be great! Its not currently practical for everyone to keep a list of every survey and study they have just to have an opinion or observation about something. But you can contribute with supporting or counter logic if thats the kind of signaling you like

Last time I encountered these sorts of claims on HN I did the above research and the results surprised me. I'd like to find time to further narrow this research as you suggest above, and I suspect I'd find evidence of discrimination, as I suspected the last time. Though I will keep an open mind. In the meantime I would remind you to remember the burden of proof is traditionally on what is being claimed--not on disproving a claim.

Traditionally, but you can contribute if you think fixing the absence will help people or further a discussion

This seems like a false sense of safety. With weed if it's the lowest priority they will ignore the smell/reports of the smell.

With mushrooms they'll find them incident to arrest and thus probably tack on a charge to whatever else they were investigating

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