READING, Pa.- Two marijuana-related proposals are now on the table in the City of Reading. One is a resolution asking Pennsylvania lawmakers to legalize recreational marijuana statewide.<\/p>\n
The other is a proposed ordinance that would decriminalize small amounts of marijuana locally, specifically, 30 grams or less.<\/p>\n
Councilman Jaime Baez, who introduced the ordinance, says the goal is to stop penalizing residents for minor offenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would stop penalizing not only our youth, but our residents. And stop putting them through loopholes, through an ARD program that really, I think, hinders our residents,\u201d Baez said.<\/p>\n
Baez says Reading is behind when it comes to marijuana policy, pointing to neighboring cities and states that have already made changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got 20-plus municipalities who have passed this in the state of Pennsylvania,\u201d Baez said. \u201cWe have our neighboring states that have already decriminalized amounts of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not everyone on council is on board. Council President Donna Reed raised concerns about the impact on city operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis ordinance would require restructuring, to some degree, of how we do things. And there\u2019s always a monetary cost to that, there\u2019s always a personnel cost to that,\u201d Reed said. \u201cAnd I think right now it\u2019s inappropriate, and I certainly could not possibly support it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reed also questioned what the ordinance would mean for enforcement, especially in a region with many municipalities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of where we\u2019re sitting here. You go over the bridge, the law is different in West Reading,\u201d Reed said. \u201cIt confuses all of our folks as to what is okay and where is it okay. It\u2019s much better if it was a county-wide situation where everyone got together on the same page.\u201d<\/p>\n
The resolution supporting statewide legalization could pass right away. The local ordinance will need to go through the full council process before any final vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- Two marijuana-related proposals are now on the table in the City of Reading. One is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3298,2716,1091,3297,28,736,128,1095,130,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-3644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-decriminalization","9":"tag-donna-reed","10":"tag-jaime-baez","11":"tag-marijuana","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-council","16":"tag-reading-city-headlines","17":"tag-reading-city-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}