Activists target Texas State students to pass pot reform measure

San Marcos is just one city on an ever-growing list pushing for decriminalization. Mike Siegel, Ground Game Texas political director, said his group also is working with organizers in Killeen, Harker Heights, Denton and Elgin to bring forward similar ballot measures.

The City of Austin voted 85 percent in favor of decriminalizing low-level marijuana offenses in May.

And San Antonio might be next. Siegel said activists are planning for a potential ballot measure for San Antonio’s May 2023 election that would have a series of justice reforms, including marijuana and abortion decriminalization and a ban on no-knock warrants.

Decriminalizing marijuana in San Marcos and other cities would mean that there would be no tickets or arrests for Class A and B misdemeanor possession. It would prevent the police from testing the THC content of the substance. Additionally, police would no longer be able to make arrests based on the odor of marijuana.

“We need to be keeping people out of jail and saving scarce public resources for more important public needs,” Siegel said. “But we also think this is a way to build a broader movement for criminal justice reform and a way to engage more young people and infrequent voters.”

For San Antonio’s upcoming efforts, Siegel said Ground Game is making plans with community groups including
ACT 4 SA, a group that pushes for police accountability
. Though nothing is official yet, he said organizers hope to start gathering signatures in San Antonio next month through the end of the year to qualify for the May ballot.

In San Marcos, activists said they noticed the need to get Texas State students registered to vote in recent months when collecting signatures to get the decriminalization proposition on the ballot. More than 11,000 people, many of them students, signed on, but fewer than 5,000 of those signatures could count toward the effort because people’s voter registrations were not up to date.

It’s a major issue among college students who Siegel said often don’t realize that they need to update their registration to their current address rather than where they are from if they want to vote in local elections or sign petitions.

At the start of the semester, Mano Amiga launched a student chapter of its organization, said Elle Cross, Mano Amiga right to justice coordinator. She said the team now has seven people who spend four days per week getting people registered.

“No one should be incarcerated or locked up or have to go through the complicated legal system for minor possession of marijuana,” Cross said during a Monday news conference about the launch of the student-focused, get-out-the-vote campaign. “It is traumatizing, it is expensive, it is complicated. People should not have to go through that.”

Sam Benavides, Mano Amiga’s communications director, said that beyond decriminalizing marijuana, organizers also want to focus on students to try increasing the political efficacy in that demographic by showing them “that they are capable of creating change.”