When Connecticut's new governor and state legislators, contemplating state government's financial collapse, remark that "everything is on the table" for economizing, they're probably not thinking about the criminal law, since there are no line items in the budget for criminal laws. But criminal laws are as much an expense as anything else state government pays for, even as criminal law may have less to do with protecting the public than with keeping people employed in law enforcement.

The other day the state police announced with fanfare that they had arrested 13 people, including a radio personality and a Wolcott town councilman, and had seized some fancy cars in connection with an illegal sports betting ring in the Hartford area that had been investigated for more than a year not only by the state police but also by the FBI, IRS, and the chief state's attorney's office. The charges include racketeering, professional gambling, and conspiracy.

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As a drug policy activist, I found the results of the Nov. 2 elections both disappointing and informative. It was disappointing because, out of four major marijuana policy bills I hoped and expected to pass (Prop 19 in California, Prop 203 in Arizona, Measure 13 in South Dakota, and Measure 74 in Oregon), zero actually did. In light of these - for lack of a better term - sobering results, I have encountered many people, students and non-students, inside and outside of the movement, who take these results as a death knell for the marijuana law reform movement, especially for the effort here in Connecticut.

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Soon after George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, he had a friendly meeting with Vincente Fox, then president of Mexico, during which President Bush acknowledged America's shared responsibility in the decades-long war on drugs. Millions of American drug buyers and users were the principal contributors to the war's continuance. Mr. Bush openly confessed to Mr. Fox that he was intimately aware of the misuse of drugs, having once slipped into years of alcoholism himself. He was by then free of his addiction, but his countrymen's addiction to drugs continued. In his watch, Mr. Bush told the Mexican president, the U.S. would take action.

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Should marijuana use be legalized in this country?

Adam Ross spent several years working on a documentary, "Cash Crop," that explores the world of marijuana growers and users in California, but he hopes his movie leaves the answer to that contentious question posed above to those who see the film.

"Cash Crop" has gained new topicality with California voters facing a proposition next week that would decriminalize marijuana -- perfect timing for the Connecticut premiere in New Haven on Friday.

"I'm obviously sympathetic," Ross said of the way both growers and users are depicted in "Cash Crop."

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BETHEL --Eleven-year-old Lauren Messert wants to save the drug education program she thinks works, so she's circulating a petition to reinstate DARE a year after she took the course.

The Bethel Middle School sixth-grader has collected more than 500 signatures of Bethel parents, teachers and students and hopes to use the petition to show the Police Commission that the drug education program should not be cut.

The Police Department said staffing needs required eliminating the program Youth Officer Ralph DeLuca taught to fifth-graders in the second half of the school year, running half-hour classes for 10 weeks.

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With enough generations having had the chance to understand that the 1930s movie "Reefer Madness" was anti-drug propaganda and that the "War on Drugs" is clearly not a war that can be successfully fought, let alone won, isn't it time Connecticut takes a genuinely fresh look at marijuana laws?

A number of recent news articles have made me scratch my head in wonder. The first was a few weeks back about how there is a growing population of illegal immigrants from Mexico who are growing vast marijuana crops deep in California's forests. Fueled by the demand, and lucrative payoff, from us Americans, these men (and women perhaps) are able to thwart authorities. The defenses set up by these growers put our brave law enforcement folks in grave danger. There are explosive traps set around the crops and the bandits are heavily armed.

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Challenger, Incumbent Differ On Legalization

NEW MILFORD -- Nicholas W. Payne, the Green Party candidate vying to unseat five-term incumbent Rep. Clark J. Chapin, R-New Milford, believes the state would save both dollars and lives by legalizing drugs.

Payne, 61, said the May 20, 2008, murder of his daughter, Rebecca, a student at Northeastern University who was shot inside her Boston apartment, inspired his run for office. Rebecca Payne's murder, which attracted extensive media attention, remains unsolved. Payne said police have told him they believe it was a case of mistaken identity, and his daughter had no known connection to illegal drugs. Payne said that while the circumstances may never be known, his daughter's murder was all but certainly related to the drug trade.

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Politicians, Academics and Former Police Press for a More Candid Discussion About the Costs of Criminalizing Drugs

When Clifford Thornton was two weeks shy of graduating high school in 1963, a Hartford police officer showed up at his grandmother's door one Sunday morning. The cop asked Thornton to accompany him to a nearby field. There, inside an abandoned car, was the body of Thornton's mother, dead of an apparent heroin overdose.

"No words can describe how I felt," says Thornton. "But, as I came to my senses, one thought resonated: all illegal drugs should be eradicated from the face of the earth."

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WEST HAVEN - In one corner of the playground outside Washington School, Clinton Police Officer Matthew Reed had a group of young campers laughing, as he joked and led a conversation about friendship and peer pressure.

Across the parking lot, West Haven Officer Kim Bennett sat with a group of 6, 7 and 8 year olds, listening to their questions and suggestions, and teaching them about safe decision making. But the children aren't the students here, the police officers are. For two weeks, West Haven has hosted 27 officers from across the state and country in the city's first Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer training program.

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Ridgefield substance abuse therapist Liz Jorgensen is shocked that no one has hit the panic button yet over the latest drug abuse trends.

Statistics indicate prescription drug overdoses are killing nice kids from nice families in well-to-do communities all over the country.

Prescription drug use in Connecticut now kills more people under the age of 34 than car crashes, Jorgensen said, quoting a national study of figures from 2006 released this year.

Nationwide, 45,000 are killed in car crashes; 39,000 die from prescription drug overdoses, according to the study.

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Thank you for publishing Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column "Legalize Marijuana, Treat, Don't Punish" on July 20.

In our failed "War on Drugs" we have indeed spent billions, ruined millions of lives, jailed a very unequal number of blacks and, most important of all, given the criminal world an enormous source of revenue. All because human nature wants what it wants and no amount of punishment will change that reality, as we should have learned by the failure of Prohibition.

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Republican Rob Merkle, of Norwalk, who is challenging two other candidates in an August primary to run for U.S. Congress, said a video making fun of his arrest 10 years ago on marijuana charges is over the line and distracts voters from real issues.

One of his two opponents in the race, Rick Torres, of Bridgeport, called Merkle a "hypocrite."

Torres and Merkle are running against Dan Debicella, of Shelton, who won the Republican Party endorsement at the convention for the 4th Congressional District, a seat held by Democrat Jim Himes, of Greenwich.

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The Drug War

Has a mission;

'Bout as smart as

Prohibition.

The Associated Press recently reported on some exhaustive research, undertaken by the nonprofit International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.

These tireless scholars examined 300 studies covering the past 20 years, evaluating the public good arising from police crusades against drug peddling.

The result of all those beefed-up crackdowns? Increased violence! It seems that whenever you finally nab the top drug lords, a deadly struggle erupts to replace them. Gang wars explode, body counts rise, and new openings arise for upwardly mobile young thugs.

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MIDDLETOWN - A proposed plan to prevent marijuana dispensaries from gaining grandfathered status in the city was rejected by the Planning and Zoning Commission Wednesday.

According to the proposed zoning code text amendments, the town would have permitted primary use of the drug under three exceptions - an active hospital with more than 50 beds, a pharmacy and a medical clinic with more than five practitioners. Distance requirements for the amendment do not allow the three exceptions to be within 500 feet of a child care center, 500 feet from a school, 100 feet from a residential zone or within 1,000 feet of another marijuana dispensary.

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MIDDLETOWN - City planners are hoping the Planning and Zoning Commission will approve preemptively limiting where marijuana dispensaries can be located before medical marijuana is made legal in the state.

The commission will be discussing a proposed zoning text amendment Wednesday that limit the place of sale of marijuana, medical or otherwise, to an accessory use where the primary use of the building is an over 50-bed hospital, a pharmacy, or a medical clinic with more than five practitioners.

The change would only allow the sale or dispensation of marijuana in certain zones and the location would have to be at least 100 feet from a residential zone unless a variance was granted, among other restrictions.

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Arizonans have passed legislation to stem the tide of violence in their state, mostly related to the drug trade.

The Taliban will soon begin its spring assault, using weapons purchased with profits from the poppy crop.

We are enablers of those events with our insistence that we can ban detrimental substances, despite overwhelming evidence that our efforts are in vain.

We should abandon the "drug war" and instead win the Arizona border war and defeat the Taliban.

The drug marketplace cannot be stopped, but drugs can be made prescription items and sold at reasonable prices.

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While we continue to waste billions of dollars fighting a "war on drugs," this year about 10,000 people -- mainly lower class black men -- will die needlessly in the streets of America.

Tens of thousands more will die in places such as Mexico and Colombia while attempting to meet the demand for drugs.

America is the country with the largest percentage of its population in jail, yet the drugs remain. Even worse, we cannot even keep the drugs out of the prisons, never mind off the streets.

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Aviva Markowitz got an arrow splitting bull's-eye exposing cannabis (marijuana) prohibition (4/20 Raises Marijuana Awareness, Ethical Questions, April 20, 2010) for what it is. Another reason to stop caging responsible adults who use cannabis that doesn't get mentioned is because it is Biblically correct since Christ God Our Father, The Ecologician, indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30). The only Biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5). The list of reasons to RE-legalize cannabis is growing faster than the plant itself.

Truthfully,

Stan White

Stan White is a reader of The Argus and a resident of Colorado.

[end]

Students for a Safe Drug Policy saw April 20 as an opportunity to discuss the issues surrounding the prohibition of marijuana.

Today at 4:20 p.m., a massive smoke cloud formed above Foss Hill, as well as above college campuses and public parks across the nation, in a yearly tradition that is both a celebration of marijuana and a political statement promoting its legalization. Although many students use this holiday as an excuse to blaze all day, for members of Students for a Safe Drug Policy (SSDP), April 20 is an opportunity to raise awareness for the greater problems surrounding the prohibition of marijuana.

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HARTFORD (AP) -- A Connecticut legislator says it's high time to pass a law allowing cities and towns to tax illegal marijuana sales.

Republican state Sen. Robert Kane of Watertown says his legislation, which he also proposed last year, would give cash-strapped municipalities another way to raise revenue while penalizing drug dealers.

Kane is looking to take advantage of a 1991 state law that allows state government to tax illegal marijuana sales.

State police reported seizing nearly 1,400 kilograms of marijuana during the fiscal year that ended last June 30. At a tax rate of $3.50 a gram, that could have generated more than $4.8 million in tax revenue. But state government collected only $60,000 two years ago, according to the most recent figures available.

Kane's bill is pending.

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