- November 14, 2024
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Should possessing small amounts of marijuana be a criminal offense? Or should it be a civil citation, like a parking fine?
That's the issue Palm Coast and Flagler County officials hope to take on in a proposed meeting where they will discuss Sheriff James Manfre's proposal to downgrade the punishment law enforcement officers mete out for marijuana possession, letting deputies issue a citation instead of criminal charges.
Palm Coast Mayor Jon Netts, who plans to attend the meeting, said at a City Council workshop April 26 that he doesn't oppose the idea that marijuana possession should be handled without criminal charges. But Netts — usually a champion of the right of local communities to govern themselves with minimal state interference — questioned whether this issue is one that should be left up to municipalities.
"Personally, I think decriminalization of small amounts is probably long overdue," he said. "But I’m going to push very, very hard that the Florida Association of Counties, the Florida League of Cities, pressure our legislators in Tallahassee to deal with it in a uniform, statewide manner," regardless of what Palm Coast and other local communities decide to do, he said.
Netts said problems could arise if communities end up with a disparate patchwork of policies.
"Every time we’ve done something significant in Palm Coast, I’ve said, 'Well, let's be sure we share this with the other communities," he said. "When we did the pill mills, we shared that so everybody would be on the same page. When we talked about adult entertainment, we shared that with everybody else so that we didn’t create a safe haven for bad behavior elsewhere. The problem I have with this — and again, it has nothing to do with the social issues regarding marijuana — but I think this would be much better handled by our state Legislature. They’ve seen fit to pre-empt our ability to regulate plastic shopping bags; it would seem to me in their infinite wisdom they should create a situation that is statewide. Because if community A says, ‘Oh no, we’re not going to do this,’ and B says, 'We’re going to reduce the penalty to a civil citation,' you are now creating dissimilailities in behavior, dissimilarities of treatment."
City Attorney Bill Reischman said a number of Florida communities have been discussing lessening the penalty for marijuana possession.
"There has been a lot of discussion about this topic throughout the state of Florida," he said. "I know that the city of Orlando is considering it, Daytona Beach is talking about it. ... All it does is it adds to your list of civil citations, 'possession of a misdemeanor amount of marijuana or drug paraphernalia,' such that the enforcing officer would have the opportunity, or flexibility if you would, to choose not to arrest someone and charge them with a first-degree misdemeanor, but in lieu of that, issue a citation."
That does not mean that code enforcement officers would be involved, City Manager Jim Landon said. They're not equipped for that.
"We’re really trying to make sure everybody knows: Our code enforcement officers will not be involved," he said, noting that drug dealers "carry guns and are serious about this stuff," and that code enforcement officers are not able to conduct searches or make arrests. "This is using law enforcement officers to enforce a local code."
Reischmann noted that many other jurisdictions considering the change have their own city police departments, and Palm Coast does not. It contracts with the Flagler County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement services. But, he said, "I think if there's a positive of this, it's the argument that, is this something that we really want to use our criminal justice system — the courts, the police, the prisons — for this type of illegal activity. And if not, what are the options?"
Councilwoman Heidi Shipley noted that when someone is charged with a drug-related crime — as opposed to receiving a citation — the criminal charges stay on their record and can affect their life decades later.
"If you take a misdemeanor or a felony ... you’re taking that through your whole life," she said. "It’s going to be something on there — where, you know, in the '80s you may have smoked something and you don’t want it to follow you your whole life if it was just something small."
The meeting will be held at 8:45 a.m. May 11 at the county Emergency Operations Center, behind the Government Services Building on State Road 100.
