California Lawmakers Want To Increase Penalties For Possessing Date-Rape Drugs

February 24, 2015
Los Angeles

By Sharon Bernstein
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb 23 (Reuters) – Illegal possession of supposed date-rape drugs would turn a intensity transgression underneath a check in California to retreat what supporters contend is an unintended effect of a voter-approved law shortening penalties for non-violent crimes.
The magnitude by Republican Tom Lackey, set to be listened by a Assembly Public Safety Committee subsequent month, would concede prosecutors a option to assign people in bootleg possession of a drugs Rohypnol, GHB and ketamine with possibly a transgression or a misdemeanor.
“Date rape drugs are collection in a palm of predators and they’re not a recreational drug,” pronounced Lackey.
The former California Highway Patrol sergeant pronounced on Monday he had collected a bipartisan group of lawmakers to pull a bill. Democrat Cathleen Galgiani is subsidy a identical magnitude in a state senate.
The 3 medication sedatives, that can be used in surgery, have been concerned in passionate assaults. Attackers pretence victims into holding a narcotics, infrequently by slipping them into drinks. The victims are afterwards rendered comatose or scarcely so, and can some-more simply be assaulted.
Prosecutors once had a ability to assign defendants with a transgression for possessing a 3 drugs, though that altered after electorate upheld Proposition 47 in final November’s election.
The list measure, partial of a broader bid to revoke sentences for some non-violent and drug-related crimes, reduced countless drug possession charges to misdemeanors from felonies.
“We’re not perplexing to uncover Proposition 47,” Lackey said. “We trust this was one of a pieces of Proposition 47 that was unintended in a mind of a voter.”
Since a tender was voter-approved, undoing partial of it would need an election.
If Lackey’s check is upheld by a Legislature and sealed by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, it will go before electorate in Nov 2016.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/calif-lawmakers-seek-to-_n_6739788.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles&ir=Los+Angeles