{"id":52882,"date":"2021-01-15T16:31:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T16:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merryjane.com\/michigan-county-declares-it-wont-prosecute-people-for-psychedelics-and-weed-possession\/"},"modified":"2021-01-15T16:31:16","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T16:31:16","slug":"michigan-county-declares-it-wont-prosecute-people-for-psychedelics-and-weed-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merryjane.com\/news\/michigan-county-declares-it-wont-prosecute-people-for-psychedelics-and-weed-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan County Declares It Won’t Prosecute People for Psychedelics and Weed Possession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone busted with shrooms or weed in Ann Arbor or the surrounding parts of Michigan will no longer face criminal charges<\/u><\/a>, thanks to the county’s top prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Eli Savit<\/u><\/a>, Washtenaw County’s newly-elected prosecuting attorney, released two official directives explaining that his office will no longer be pursuing criminal charges against anyone caught with cannabis or entheogens (natural psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca). The directives also note that the prosecutor\u2019s office will not contest any applications for expungement of cannabis- or entheogen-related crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica\u2019s long experiment with cannabis criminalization has failed,\u201d Savit explains in the new cannabis directive<\/u><\/a>. \u201cFor nearly 100 years, cannabis has been functionally illegal in the United States\u2014tethering countless Americans to the criminal justice system, and imposing severe collateral consequences. The costs of cannabis criminalization, moreover, have not been borne equally. Instead, those costs have been borne disproportionately by Black and indigenous people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n