In the middle of this year’s legislative session, the Washington Supreme Court dropped its Blake decision, declaring the law criminalizing drug possession in the state to be unconstitutional. What followed was a sprint by lawmakers to answer the justices’ enormous ruling — a balancing act between conservatives eager to make drug possession a felony again and progressives who wanted to make decriminalization permanent.
The Legislature ended up with a compromise that was good enough for just enough legislators anxious to do something in the wake of a landmark ruling.
“So much of the anxiety of letting go of the old system is not because people think it’s particularly good but
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