State Bill Targets Nashville Marijuana Law

NASHVILLE, TN — As he promised, a Republican state legislator has filed a bill that would overturn Nashville's efforts to lower penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

State Rep. William Lamberth, Republican of Cottontown and a prosecutor by trade, filed the bill which he says is consistent with an opinion issued in November by the state's Attorney General Herbert Slatery, who opined that because the state has a rigorous regulatory scheme for marijuana and other illegal drugs, state law pre-empts local ordinances on the matter, like that passed by the Metro Council in September.

The Nashville law, approved in a 35-3 vote by the council, gives police officers the option of issuing a $50 civil penalty — similar to a traffic ticket — for possession of less than a half-ounce of marijuana. Slatery, in his opinion, which is non-binding, said that effectively gives prosecutorial discretion to police officers rather than the district attorney, who is accountable to voters.

Lamberth's bill, which he told The Tennessean will be sponsored in the Senate by Jack Johnson of Franklin, will make it clear that drug police is the state's bailiwick.

"You can’t allow an officer at their whim to treat two different individuals who have potentially committed the same crime in drastically different ways depending on what that officer feels like at a given time,” he told the newspaper. “You just can’t have cities creating their own criminal code, willy-nilly.”

Last fall, Lamberth said that he was considering a bill which would strip road funding from local governments who passed their own drug laws, but the bill he's filed contains no punitive measures.

Memphis' City Council passed a similar measure a few weeks after Nashville did, but stayed its implementation following Slatery's opinion.

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