A local ordinance in San Francisco instructs police to make marijuana possession their lowest priority, but observers say that drug busts continue to take place in the city, the San Francisco Bay Guardian reported May 22.

Public defender Eric Luce says that he has eight active cases involving smalltime marijuana sales and that busts of marijuana transactions -- including undercover operations -- have increased recently. Luce charged that District Attorney Kamala Harris is looking to boost prosecution statistics during an election year. "They're being charged every day," he said. "This is a fairly new phenomenon, and I think it's linked 100 percent to getting felony conviction rates up."

A review of records at the DA's office found more than three dozen felony marijuana possession charges being filed in 2007. The head of the DA's narcotics unit, Sharon Woo, noted that the city ordinance specifically exempts "hand-to-hand" sales in public places, as well as sales "within view of any person on public property," and said that most of the cases on file resulted from complaints by residents about open drug sales.

"The [Police] Department is really answering a community request for assistance, and we're prosecuting based on the information they give us," Woo said. "When it's in an open place, a public place, we treat hand-to-hand sales of marijuana as seriously as any other type of crime."

Experts believe that in many other cases, police have simply confiscated marijuana from individuals without filing drug charges, in the belief that such cases won't be prosecuted adequately, if at all.