Whereas tens of thousands of individuals are prosecuted each year for the production, distribution and possession of marijuana and other cannabis products;
Whereas such prosecution results in the loss of property and liberty either directly to the state or in peripheral ways;
Whereas many of those tens of thousands are locked in prisons, separated from their families, lose their livelihoods and/or a substantial source of income, are excluded from some occupations, and are permanently limited in their futures as productive individual as well as many other individual rights;
Whereas many cannabis “legalization” movements have proposed to maintain the criminalization of cannabis and aim to increase government control and revenues to the detriment of cannabis producers, distributors and users;
Whereas cannabis “legalization” movements have not addressed the restoration of life and property owed to those who have suffered from historical criminalization;
Whereas a libertarian solution to the prohibition of cannabis would be to allow consenting individuals to produce, distribute, share, and possess cannabis products without government interference or taxation;
Whereas the Libertarian Party’s national platform and the platform of the Libertarian Party of Georgia each call for the repeal of all laws creating crimes without victims, including the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes;
Whereas a (more or less) libertarian solution to the prohibition of cannabis was proposed to the Texas state legislature in 2015 by conservative Republican state legislator David Simpson and was passed out of committee by a bi-partisan vote of Democrats and Republicans;
Whereas a substantial majority of Georgians across the political spectrum support the decriminalization of cannabis, including those who seek individual liberty, criminal justice reform, affordable health care, and an end to violent and punitive policing,
Whereas The Constitution of the United States commands the government to “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” and the prosecution of people for exercising their choice to consume cannabis is not in the spirit of the law of the land.
Therefore Be It Resolved, that the Libertarian Party of Georgia:
- condemns the past and continued prosecution of individuals for engaging in non-violent behavior, specifically for producing, distributing, sharing, and/or possessing cannabis and cannabis products; and
- condemns the confiscation of property and the restrictions on liberty as a result of those prosecutions; and
- condemns criminalization of non-violent individuals for use or production of cannabis, which strips them of rights, imprisons or jails them, destroys their families, their lives, and their futures; and
- rejects the “regulate and tax” schemes of marijuana “legalization” movements, which rely on expansion and extension of government interference and favor the well-connected at the expense of others; and
- advocates for actions which will begin to restore the liberties and livelihoods of those unjustly targeted by cannabis laws, including the sealing or expunging of arrests and convictions, and the immediate and unconditional release of anyone currently in jail or prison as a result of such arrests and/or convictions; and
- advocates for actions to remove any government interference in the production, distribution, and possession of cannabis and any related products; and
- urges the Executive Committee of the Libertarian Party of Georgia to create a committee to draft legislation, and recruit legislative sponsors for such legislation, to begin implementing these policies at the state level, specifically to remove the words “cannabis,” “marijuana,” “hemp,” and all related terms from the Georgia criminal code and to exonerate and expunge the records of all people who have been arrested and convicted of cannabis related “offenses”; and
- urges the Libertarian National Committee of the Libertarian Party of the USA to do the same with respect to the federal government and further to adopt a legislative template to be made available to state LP affiliates for drafting libertarian legislative proposals in the states; and
- urges Libertarian Party activists at all levels of LP membership to advocate for a libertarian solution to cannabis prohibition and resist “tax and regulate” expansions of control; and
- urges the Libertarian Party of the USA and the Libertarian Party of Georgia to seek allies among other political parties and among the many cannabis legalization and individual rights advocacy movements, and to advocate legislatively and among the public at large for these policy changes.
