Washington lawmakers are weighing whether or not adults will be able to have misdemeanor convictions for marijuana possession dismissed if they were more than 21 years old at the time of the offense.

The House’s Public Safety Committee is considering a bill by Democratic legislators that would allow dismissal of misdemeanor convictions for possession of 40 grams or less of marijuana.

Washington voters passed Initiative 502 in 2012, legalizing the sale and use of recreational marijuana.

“Now that possession of marijuana is legal under Washington state law, it seems unfair to me that people who were convicted of it prior to the passage still have the difficulty of that conviction,” said Alex Frix, Thurston County public defender. Frix was the only speaker on the bill at the hearing earlier this month.

If the bill passes, someone with a misdemeanor marijuana possession conviction would need to obtain a court order from a judge stating they qualify to have their record expunged, said Penni Reavis, support services manager at the Pullman Police Department.

Unlike the way other misdemeanors are expunged, a marijuana offender would not have to wait three years after completing the sentence to have the conviction cleared from their record.

Once police receive the order from the judge, Reavis said they would delete the conviction. State Patrol would likely also receive orders to delete records of the subjects’ fingerprints.

“Your future jobs won’t be able to see that you were even arrested,” she said.

Clearing people’s records is “righting a wrong,” said Carol Ehrhart, the owner of 420 Friendly in Spokane.

Ehrhart said she’s talked to many customers who have been convicted of growing or possessing marijuana.

“Having that on their record has really prevented a lot of people from being able to get good jobs and moving up in life,” she said.

Frix noted that a misdemeanor marijuana conviction can affect not only someone’s ability to get a job, but can negatively impact educational opportunities as well.

Any drug conviction can make it difficult to get a student loan, he said. “(It) creates a burden that someone without that conviction wouldn’t have.”

Representative Sherry Appleton, D-Poulsbo, a supporter of the bill, said having a misdemeanor on one’s record is a “life sentence.”

“What I believe we’ve done is created a permanent underclass of people because once you have a misdemeanor on your record your chances of ever getting a scholarship, going into the military, or getting into an apartment, go away,” Appleton said.

Appleton said she thinks the bill will pass in the House, but the Senate is still up in the air.

However, Pullman Police Chief Gary Jenkins said a policy like the one proposed by the bill could give people false expectations.

“I think that the practice of retroactively making something legal is a little bit dangerous in that it … might encourage some people to violate the law with the hope that, later on, it’s going to be expunged,” Jenkins said. “So it might lead some people to end up with a record.”

Mark W. Muenster, a member of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, wrote in an email that “expunge” might not be the most precise word because it connotes erasure or deletion.

“If there is one thing I know about records of convictions, is that they will be around as long as there is electricity to run the computers,” Muenster wrote.

Jim Laukkonen, an attorney with Cordes Brandt in Olympia, agreed, writing, “Washington court records will still show that the case existed unless you can get the record sealed – fat chance of that.”