{"id":21294,"date":"2025-07-24T23:59:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-milder-court-options-for-underage-pot-possession\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:05:41","slug":"cortez-council-approves-milder-court-options-for-underage-pot-possession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-approves-milder-court-options-for-underage-pot-possession\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez council approves milder court options for underage pot possession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A sign marking a cannabis dispensary in Santa Fe County. The state\u2019s Regulation and Licensing Department will soon hire a police chief tasked with leading a new crew of certified police officers to enforce criminal violations of the state\u2019s cannabis laws. Lawmakers also are pushing for action addressing the high number of licenses in the state. Shaun Griswold\/Source New Mexico<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Cortez City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to amend an ordinance so as to allow law enforcement more flexibility on sending youths caught with pot, alcohol or nicotine products to lower court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s long overdue, and it allows municipal court to deal with the less serious offenses that wouldn\u2019t require incarceration and jailing,\u201d City Attorney Patrick Coleman said of the amendments.<\/p>\n

Prior to the amendment, almost all youth offenders found in possession of tobacco or cannabis by law enforcement were sent to district court, which tends to entail a more serious level of judicial intervention, said Municipal Court Judge Beth Padilla, who described the ideas behind the proposed amendment during a City Council meeting on July 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cA basic concept of criminal justice is you don\u2019t want to put low-level offenders next to really serious, high-level offenders,\u201d Padilla said during the meeting earlier this month.<\/p>\n

The new amendment now gives law enforcement officers the option of sending a youth offender to municipal court instead, which deals with less severe criminal offenses.<\/p>\n

In between first considering the amendment earlier in July and Tuesday night\u2019s official vote to apply the changes in code, city officials added a few adjustments.<\/p>\n

Previously, more flexible sentencing options only applied to possession of tobacco and cannabis products, but new updates also added alcohol.<\/p>\n

City Council also expanded the amendment\u2019s wording, going went beyond \u201cpossession,\u201d to add \u201cpurchase\u201d and \u201cconsumption\u201d into the amendments.<\/p>\n

During Tuesday night\u2019s meetings, Padilla described the municipal court\u2019s juvenile docket, occurring during the second Monday of each month at 8:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpecifically I chose that time so that any juvenile defendants that are in the courtroom can still get to school on time,\u201d Padilla said.<\/p>\n

Padilla said that she hopes the court can address their case in the morning so that \u201cthey won\u2019t have any additional truancy issues as a result of their pending criminal case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspects in possession of alcohol and nicotine were also included in the council\u2019s amendment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77249,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21294\/revisions\/77249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21294"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}