californians can get rid of past weed convictions, which has consequences on voting rights, job applications & more

After the passage of the massive tax law Proposition 64, Californians will have new rights and regulations regarding the growth, transportation and sale of marijuana for recreational use.

By a margin of about 56% to 44%, voters passed the measure in December, making California the fifth state to legalize recreational marijuana (following Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska). That same day, voters in Massachusetts and Nevada did the same. The vote marked 20 years after California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996.

What’s important about California’s new law, however, is how it handles marijuana-related convictions. Traditionally, weed legalization barred those who had already been criminalized for the drug from most new benefits, overwhelmingly harming Black and brown communities. As usual, people of color faced the harshest consequences before, and white people cashed out the most after.

But in large part due to lobbying by the ACLU, criminal penalties are set to undergo changes after November 6th. “Some past offenders will have a chance to get their records expunged (or get out of jail early); and people under the age of 18 will be ‘sentenced’ not with jail time but drug counseling and community service if they are caught with cannabis,” reports TIME Magazine. “When they come of age, those records will be destroyed.”

Hopefully, this should go some way toward righting the wrongs of the racist war on drugs.