Rhode Island Becomes 19th State to Legalize, 8th with Automatic Record Clearance for Marijuana
Bucking the trend in the Northeast, where states like Delaware saw their legalization efforts get thwarted by the Governor’s veto, and in New Hampshire, where efforts have also stalled, the Ocean State’s legalization bill advanced through the Legislature with relative ease and has already been signed into law by Governor McKee.
Earlier this year, LPP joined a coalition of Rhode Island advocacy organizations in pushing legislators to bolster the provisions related to record clearance for cannabis criminal records. LPP’s State Policy Director, Gracie Burger, also submitted
written testimony requesting improvements to the proposed record clearance process.
Through the intervention and assistance from LPP, Marijuana Policy Project, the Formerly Incarcerated Union of RI, the Working Families Party, Reclaim RI, and Representative Leo Felix, Rhode Island’s legalization bill creates an automatic (state-initiated) record clearance process that should
remove at least 27,000 cases upon implementation. Rhode Island now joins the small but growing list of legalized states that provide automatic record clearance for cannabis criminal records. These states are California, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Vermont, and Virginia.
LPP is proud of the progress made in Rhode Island to address the harm caused by cannabis criminalization, but much more work remains to be done. Though Rhode Island is now only the eighth legalized state to provide some level of automatic marijuana record clearance, there is still room for improvement in their law by expanding the eligibility criteria to allow for all cannabis-related criminal records to be eligible for automatic record clearance. Additionally, Rhode Island still does not provide individuals incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses a pathway toward release. LPP will continue to push for states to adopt more robust automatic record clearance laws and state-initiated resentencing provisions because the War on Drugs doesn’t end with legalization. It ends when the last prisoner goes free.
