This article reflects the findings of Carnegie Mellon University’s Fall 2015 Ethics, History and Public Policy Senior Capstone Project. Seniors participating were Jack Devine, Daniel Kusbit, Stephen Nimalasuriya, Lisa Tu and Gabriel Vegh-Gaynor, working under the supervision of Jay Aronson, an associate professor of Science, Technology and Society.

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Every year in Pittsburgh, nearly 1,000 people face criminal charges for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

About 70 percent of those charged in 2014 were African-Americans — even though the proportion of African-Americans in Pittsburgh is 26 percent and whites and blacks use marijuana at similar rates. This means that local drug laws have disproportionately affected African-Americans.

Criminal records, even when misdemeanors are reduced to summary offenses, can have lasting collateral consequences in addition to any fines or sentences imposed. Those convicted can face the loss of jobs, job opportunities, professional licenses and access to state assistance.

Pittsburgh City Council just approved a marijuana decriminalization bill and Mayor Bill Peduto signed it into law, representing a small but important step toward implementing a rational approach to regulating the possession, sale and use of this drug. Additional work is necessary to ensure that the policy actually achieves its intended effects.

Current marijuana policies are the product of various historical factors largely unrelated to the health impacts of the drug itself. In the early 20th century, alcohol temperance rhetoric greatly influenced the first marijuana restriction policies. Around the same time, marijuana use became associated with an influx of Mexican immigration following the Mexican revolution, as well as with black urban populations as marijuana rose to prominence in jazz culture. The influence of morally charged, contemporary Prohibitionist rhetoric, combined with racial fears associated with the drug, led to gross exaggerations of the harms of marijuana use. This was exemplified by the spread of informational campaigns throughout the 1930s and 1940s in the style of “Reefer Madness,” which exaggerated the harm of marijuana use.

Calls to decriminalize marijuana in the United States, along the lines of the Pittsburgh approach, are not new. In 1939, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia commissioned the New York Academy of Medicine to determine whether harsh laws on marijuana were justified. The academy’s final report determined that those laws were not justified and it recommended the liberalization of marijuana policy. In 1972, a federal commission chaired by former Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer, a Republican, came to the same conclusion. After analyzing the risks and public health effects of marijuana use, both expert committees recommended that marijuana be decriminalized and controlled in ways similar to alcohol and tobacco. However, each was ignored and marijuana prohibition remained in place.

It is important to acknowledge that Pittsburgh’s new ordinance cannot fully decriminalize marijuana possession in the city. Until changes occur at the state or federal level, police officers will still retain the discretion to charge marijuana possession as a misdemeanor offense. Pittsburgh’s law gives police officers an additional option, empowering them to charge people with small amounts of marijuana as a civil violation, carrying a fine of $25 and no permanent criminal record; marijuana possession and sale remain illegal.

If properly implemented, we estimate that compared to 2013 expenditures on marijuana possession arrests, Pittsburgh could save around $1 million annually due to decriminalization. We reached this figure by extrapolating published estimations of the cost of marijuana arrests and citations (including court costs and police time), the reduction of marijuana arrests, and the revenues earned by similar ticketing schemes under decriminalization.

Given the police discretion, it is imperative that there be police cooperation with the new policies. Both Chief of Police Cameron McLay and District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. have indicated support for the new ordinance. Without such cooperation, marijuana decriminalization may fail to achieve its intended effects.

In Chicago, police support was tenuous for a similar decriminalization bill in 2012. As a result, Chicago police used their wide discretion to continue charging the vast majority of simple marijuana possession cases as criminal misdemeanors under Illinois state law. While Chicago did see a reduction in total marijuana possession arrests, the racial disparity in those arrests has remained almost exactly the same as it was prior to decriminalization. The tickets issued for marijuana possession were also issued disproportionately to African-Americans.

Our research has further uncovered a broader set of problems that persist in the city, none of which can be solved only by decriminalizing marijuana. Pittsburgh continues to reckon with the realities of black poverty and police practices that have been the subject of multiple investigations by the U.S. Justice Department. Moreover, while the racial diversity of Pittsburgh’s police force has improved in recent years, it remains an area of concern. These issues must be addressed through stringent monitoring, evaluation and assessment focused on making the city accountable for violations of federal law and the perpetuation of unjust racial discrimination.

With these considerations in mind, we ultimately recommend a shift away from a use-reduction approach to drug policy toward a harm-reduction approach. Harm reduction is a policy framework that seeks to reduce the total harm surrounding a drug, including both the harm stemming from the use of the drug itself and the harm resulting from the enforcement of drug restriction laws. In Pittsburgh, this can best be done by mitigating the severe subsequent collateral consequences associated with a criminal record, especially for nonviolent drug possession offenses posing relatively little harm to society.

It is imperative, however, that the city of Pittsburgh now takes certain steps to ensure the successful implementation of its ordinance. 

Most importantly, clear communication with the public is vital to the success of any new policy. It is especially important that city council emphasize the distinction between decriminalization and legalization. In the province of South Australia, after marijuana was decriminalized in 1987,  the number of people who came into contact with the criminal justice system actually increased after decriminalization. This was partially attributable to police officers’ tendency to issue the new citations in cases where they may have previously only given informal warnings; additionally, post-decriminalization, many people mistakenly thought that marijuana was no longer illegal, and those who neglected to pay their fines found that they ended up with criminal records. To combat this possibility, Pittsburgh should closely monitor the payment of tickets and allow payment in installments or with community service.

Further, the city must work with public health officials to ensure that decriminalization does not significantly increase use rates, especially among youth. All available evidence suggests that a well-orchestrated decriminalization effort does not lead to increased rates of usage, but care should be taken that Pittsburgh follows this trend rather than deviates from it.

Decriminalization is not a silver bullet for the issues many hope it will address. While decriminalization can be a small step in improving relations between the Pittsburgh police and the city’s African-American community, it will have little effect on its own. A great deal of work still needs to be done to ensure that the value of the city’s new law is more than symbolic. Due to the limited legal powers of the city of Pittsburgh, decriminalization is merely an alternative enforcement option and marijuana possession will remain illegal until action is taken at the state or federal level.

First Published: January 3, 2016, 5:00 a.m.