NBA to End Marijuana Testing, Costa Rica Drug Killings on Rise, More… (4/4/23)

Missouri's marijuana legalization has become a job creation engine, the Urban Institute for a report on the impact of reforms in Mississippi's criminal justice system, and more.

Marijuana Policy

NBA Lifts Ban on Marijuana in New Collective Bargaining Agreement with Players. The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the NBA Players Association have agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement under which marijuana use is no longer banned and testing for marijuana will no longer be conducted. The changes go into effect this summer and will extend through the 2029-2030 season unless one side opts out before the end of the prior year's season. The collective bargaining agreement is for seven years.

Missouri Marijuana Legalization is Creating Thousands of Jobs. Since voters legalized marijuana at the polls last November, thousands of jobs have been created in the state's nascent marijuana industry. Workers in the industry must be licensed and, according to the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), which regulates licensing, the agency approved 264 licenses in November, more than 500 in December, and more than 1,100 each in January and February. According to DHSS, at the end of February, there were 12,970 individuals with marijuana agent IDs, up from 10,100 at the end of November.

Drug Policy

Mississippi Criminal Justice Reforms Have a Slight Impact. A new report from the Urban Institute, Assessing the Impact of Mississippi’s Front-End Drug Policy Changes, finds limited impacts from comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation passed in 2014. That year, the state implemented front-end drug policy and practice reforms to divert people from the criminal legal system when possible and to connect people to treatment when appropriate. The Urban Institute assessed the implementation of these drug-related reforms through analysis of administrative data and interviews with stakeholders in Mississippi. It found that drug-related offenses remain a major driver of arrests, incarceration, and community supervision in the state and that: 1) The number of annual felony drug sentences to incarceration and community supervision in Mississippi trended downward from 2010 to 2021; 2) There was a slight shift away from incarceration-based sentences postreform, though these sentences still accounted for just over half of all drug-related sentences; 3) The share of the prison population that had a primary drug offense in Mississippi declined from 2014 to 2019 from around 25 percent to 20 percent; 4) The overall decline in the prison population serving drug-related sentences during this period was driven by a decline in the number of Black people serving primary drug terms under Mississippi Department of Corrections jurisdiction even as the number of white people serving primary drug terms stayed relatively stable; and 5) The revocation rates for people on post release probation decreased marginally in the years immediately after passage of the reforms.

International

.Costa Rica has a reputation as a particularly peaceful corner of Central America, but it is being overtaken by violence related to its increasing role in the shipping and warehousing of cocaine. Last year, the country logged 657 homicides, the highest number of killings there since at least 1990. The violence was centered in the Caribbean port city of Limon, where the murder rate was five times the national average. Authorities believe that 65 to 80% of the local murders were believed to be "score settling" (ajuste de cuentos) for grievances tied to the drug market. "In Limon, there are four strong criminal groups competing for the drug market," said Randall Zúñiga, director of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department. These groups clash, and "generally the people who die are sellers or members of the criminal groups."