October 20-27 is National Expungement Week, a national series of free legal clinics aimed to help victims of the war on drugs clear their records, Forbes reports.
National Expungement Week aims to help the 77 million Americans with previous convictions for drug offenses clear their records. The convictions can prevent access to housing, education, employment, and other basic services. It can also prevent employment in the rapidly expanding cannabis industry, which increasingly needs labor.
Expungement Fairs are scheduled in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, LA, New Haven, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Participants are using National Expungement Week to raise the profile of their legal services, which are often available year-long.
“Considering America’s history of the war on drugs, the cannabis industry must bring justice and shared profits. As these expungement events become more common, we wanted to coordinate them to highlight the need for widespread and automated legal relief.” — Sonia Erika, spokesperson for Equity First Alliance
A number of states are allowing for the expungement of cannabis convictions following either the decriminalization or legalization of cannabis — few, however, have made it easy. California is the only state so far to offer automatic and retroactive cannabis conviction expungement.
National Expungement Week hopes to guide people through the process of expungement, which can differ state-to-state. A list of events can be found here.