Pot Fines?

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Sep 21, 2004 2:51PM

Chicago street officer Sgt. Tom Donegan is sick of arresting people for possession of small amounts of marijuana only to see judges later drop the charges. So sick of it that he wrote a 7-page proposal to ticket people found with small amounts of the drug instead. And now Chicago police officials are studying the proposal.

Donegan says that last year 94% of the 6,954 Chicago cases involving marijuana amounts smaller than 2.5 grams were dismissed and 81% of cases involving 2.5 - 10 grams were dismissed. He is proposing fining people in possession of 10 grams or less $250 each.. and is pointing out that doing so would have raised $5 million for the city in 2003.

"The argument that always comes up is that this involves decriminalizing marijuana," Donegan said. "This proposal is not about decriminalizing marijuana. Rather, this proposal will increase the number of people who are actually penalized for their possession of lesser amounts of cannabis."

A poll on the Chicago Tribune site showed that 92.7% of readers favored getting a fine instead of getting busted for marijuana possession. Maybe all the Trib readers are potheads.. but we don't think so. What do you think of the new proposal?