New Washington state law makes drug possession a misdemeanor
By RACHEL LA CORTE
and
GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
May 13, 2021 — 3:45pm
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OLYMPIA, Wash. — The jeans were from American Eagle, via Goodwill, and they were too short for their new owner, 6-foot Shannon Bowman.
So Bowman stitched a couple inches of denim onto the bottom of the legs and put them on for the first time two days after her friend had given them to her. She didn't notice the tiny, nearly empty baggie of methamphetamine in the coin pocket.
That fact more than four years later would lead to a Washington state Supreme Court decision striking down Washington's drug possession law; the expected vacation of tens of thousands of criminal convictions dating back decades; and the overhaul of the state's approach to drug possession signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee on Thursday.