8/10/2019 MEDIA ADVISORY: Attorney Gen. Holder Ends Equitable
Sharing
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Portland NORML - the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws
Russ Belville - Executive Director [email protected]
Randy Quast - Deputy Director [email protected]
Ensuring that responsible legal adult marijuana consumers are
provided the same
rights, privileges, and responsibilities as adult alcohol and
tobacco consumers.
Portland NORML- Web: PortlandNORML.org - Twitter: @PortlandNORML
- Facebook: PortlandNORML
MEDIA ADVISORY Friday, January 16, 2015
Contact: Russ Belville, Executive Director - (971)-803-8512
[email protected]
Attorney General Holder Announces the End of Federal
Equitable Sharing Program
Program Allowed Oregon State and Local Police to Turn Marijuana
Cases Over to
Federal Prosecutors in Exchange for up to Eighty Percent of
Seized Cash and Asset
Proceeds
WASHINGTON DCThe Washington Post reports
(http://wapo.st/1wgQuoN)that US Attorney General
Eric Holder has announced sweeping changes to the federal
program known as Equitable Sharing. ThePost explains The program
has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have
them
adopted by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The
program allowed police departments
and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of
the adopted seizures, with the rest
going to federal agencies. This practice has been especially
odious when used by police to treat
marijuana consumers as criminals in the states that have passed
decriminalization, medicalization, or
legalization of marijuana.
According to the 2014 Report from the Asset Forfeiture Oversight
Advisory Committee to the Oregon
Legislature (http://1.usa.gov/1wgQKEk ), over $2.5 million in
cash and over $3.6 billion in assets were
seized in Oregon in 2013. These seizures include criminal
forfeitures (where assets are seized for their
relation to a proven crime) and civil forfeitures (where assets
are seized merely for the hunch they may
be ill-gotten proceeds of criminal activity). For criminal
forfeitures, 245 of 279 seizures (almost 90percent) were related to
drug activity, with almost half of those drug cases relating to
marijuana. On
the civil side, 529 of 543 seizures (over 97 percent) were
related to drug activity, with over one-in-five of
those drug cases relating to marijuana.
Attorney General Holders announcement today marks the biggest
brick yet to crumble in the Berlin
Wall of the Federal Drug War, remarked Portland NORML Executive
Director Russ Belville. For
decades, the Equitable Sharing program has been used as an
end-around play by state and local
authorities to federalize marijuana cases in the name of
policing for profit. The detection of the slightest
bit of marijuana would be used by police to steal adult
marijuana consumers cash, cars, homes, and
property, without even the need to convict the consumer of any
crime.
At Portland NORML, we were concerned that police in
marijuana-phobic areas of the state wouldcontinue to use Equitable
Sharing to circumvent our newly-passed marijuana legalization
statute,
Belville explains. With this announcement, the will of 56
percent of the state to end the harassment of
law-abiding adults who choose to use a substance safer than
alcohol will be upheld.
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