Recently I had the opportunity to meet with the Senior Assistant District Attorney for a major county in Georgia. They have a budget of over $583,000,000.00. We met for breakfast at a quaint little place downtown called Thumbs Up. Tunde is running for a higher office (State Judge) and I work in nonprofit but help with some political campaigns.

    Having said that ,we were doomed to talk about budgets ,money ,and what would make sense for the crushing money problems here in Georgia. He said that the Judicial budget was 51% of his county’s total budget. Not schools ,or any of the other entities. I was shocked to say the least. Then he dropped another stat that was a shocker too. He said that over 20% of their judicial resources are spent on people that are caught with less than an ounce of pot. For those without calculators that is over $55,800,000.00 wasted on people that are not dangerous ,and produce only liabilities for his county. He has proposed changing the state laws so that they can just write a $500.00 citation instead of arresting them. This would turn the budget around and make the county much more financially sound. The he said doesn’t count the liability of a law suit. If the person is arrested and injured in the arrest experience he said the average settlement is $50,000.00.

    OMG !! To me it doesn’t matter what side of the fence you are on to legalize or not to legalize pot. What matters here is how do you prosecute those who have it in very small amounts. This is a political football and those balls hardly ever get touched. That is a shame. I’m waiting for a very brave elected official or one that wants to be elected to bring this up. It just makes cents-sense. I would love to here from someone on a state level about what affect this would have on a state budget. This seems like a no brainer but what do I know ? I’m just the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Let’s fix this together. It’s just changing the way a non violent crime is prosecuted ,not legalizing anything.

    On a personal note. I live in Gwinnett County where the budget is 1.3 billion dollars. If the numbers run the same the savings in Gwinnett County would be over 104 million dollars. And that doesn’t count the citation money or the savings from law suits.We could really use that right now.

ken@steppmail.com