OAKLAND – An Alameda County Superior Court judge on Friday signed an order reducing thousands of felony marijuana cases to misdemeanors and misdemeanor marijuana cases to infractions.

Signed by Judge Charles Smiley, the order follows the 2016 passage of Proposition 64 that legalized the possession and use of recreational marijuana by adults. The law also decreased penalties for possession with intent to sell, sales, transportation and cultivation of marijuana.

District attorney’s offices across California had until July 1 to implement the new law.

Alameda County prosecutors provided the court with a list that identified 6,921 felony cases eligible to be reduced to misdemeanors and another 1,235 misdemeanor cases eligible to be reduced to infractions.

“Judge Smiley ordered dismissed all cases that had not already been dismissed, and ordered that all cases reduced to infractions be sealed,” the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

People with qualifying convictions in Alameda County have had the option to petition for expungement, but they will no longer have to do so now that the order has been signed.