title: Mitigation of Marijuana-Related Legal Harms to Youth in California.
abstract: If recreational marijuana is legalized for adults in California, a rational implementation of public policy would neither criminalize youth possession, nor medically pathologize it by conflating possession with addiction. The harms of a criminal justice approach to juveniles should not exceed the harms of the drug itself. Juvenile arrests and probation have consequences: (1) arrest records, probation, and juvenile hall; (2) an incarceration subculture, "crime school," psychological and re-entry costs; (3) school "zero-tolerance" expulsions and suspensions; (4) ineligibility for federal school loans; (5) employment screening problems; (6) racial disparities in arrests; (7) fines and attorney's fees; and (8) immigration/naturalization problems. Marijuana-related arrest rates in California dropped after a 2011 law making possession under 1 oz. an infraction for all, but juvenile marijuana arrests continue to outnumber arrests for hard drugs. Recommendations for prudent implementation policy include: stable marijuana tax funding for Student Assistance Programs (SAPs) in high schools; elimination of "zero-tolerance" suspension/expulsion policies in favor of school retention and academic remediation programs; juvenile justice transparency discriminating among infractions, misdemeanors, and felonies. Criminal sanctions and durations must be proportional to the offense. Probation-based interventions should be reserved for larger possession amounts and recidivist offenders, and outcomes should be independently evaluated.
authors.affiliation: a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry , University of California San Francisco , San Francisco , CA , USA.|b Technical Advisor , General & Addiction Psychiatry , Hanoi , Vietnam.|c Past-President, California Society of Addiction Medicine , San Francisco , CA , USA.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Banys
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D002140:California; D002188:Cannabis; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D007880:Legislation, Drug; D002189:Marijuana Abuse
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs
keywords: Adolescents; cannabis; drug dependence; legalization; marijuana; public policy