BRIDGEPORT, Conn. - This state's law approving the sale of marijuana for medical purposes has been on the books for two years, but the drug is still not available.

Among the challenges has been finding dispensing locations acceptable to Connecticut towns and cities. Fairfield and West Haven let applicants for licenses to operate dispensaries know they would not pass zoning muster; other municipalities, including Madison, New Canaan and Westport, have imposed moratoriums of as long as a year while their zoning rules are reviewed; and this month the Bridgeport zoning board turned down a licensee.

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The dictionary describes marijuana as hemp-the dried flower tops and leaves of this plant, capable of producing disorienting or hallucinogenic effects when smoked in cigarettes or ingested. Does this sound like a substance we want people to be under the influence of? How about pilots, drivers, ship captains, train operators, lawyers, doctors, teachers and engineers? Of course not; but I encourage those who advocate the use of pot to read the book "The Real Marijuana Danger" by Malcolm F. Smith.

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Marijuana use is again highlighted in the news via a report from the University of New Hampshire.

Dr. Hans Brietner reports that teenagers who smoke marijuana once or twice per week can incur a lasting ill effect on their brains. He states that it affects motivation, emotion, causes apathy and lack of focus.

I checked this assertion out by asking a prominent PhD friend from a nearby state and he confirmed he tried marijuana once and said "it left him nutty feeling for days." Brain experts say this new medical finding should be closely watched.

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Addiction in Region Is Worse Than Ever, They Say

After more than 20 years in psychiatry, Dr. Rajesh Parekh is witnessing a new and disturbing trend among patients who come for help with drug addiction.

"Twenty years ago I would see an adolescent a few times a year," said Parekh, attending psychiatrist at the Care Plus outpatient program in Groton, part of Natchaug Hospital. "Now it's a few times a month."

The reason? Too many teenagers are abusing prescription opiate painkillers like Percocet, getting addicted, then turning to heroin.

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Painkiller Abusers Find a Cheap Option to Help Them Cope, Often With Lethal Consequences

Just 10 years ago, heroin made up a small fraction of the drug-related arrests in Norwich. These days, Detective Lt. Mark Rankowitz and fellow officers can recite any number of stories about the drug's ever-increasing impact.

There is the star high school athlete with national aspirations who injured her knee and became addicted to prescription painkillers before turning to the cheaper and more widely available alternative - heroin.

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Legalizing marijuana with controlled conditions is not just something many people want to occur; it's the right thing to do. This topic is controversial, and of course the advocates will say it's a drug that must be kept away from children. This is true -- keep it away from children just like cigarettes and alcohol.

Control the distribution, put conditions on the sales. For example with controlled sales like alcohol, you must be 21 years of age. It is not appropriate to drink and drive, so the same laws should be followed for marijuana with the same consequences.

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NEW BRITAIN - Xiomara Gonzalez was "dope sick" by the time she was interviewed by the bail commissioner about her arrest last week on charges she was carrying nearly $16,000 worth of heroin.

City detectives had the 25-year-old Hartford resident in their sights after receiving two tips she was selling drugs in New Britain on a regular basis.

Her arrest, which also led to the seizure of cocaine and a gun, yielded one of the largest quantities of heroin since the police department changed its enforcement tactics in July 2012.

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BRISTOL - Brightly colored packages with names like "Bizarro," "Platinum" and "Juicy Herbs Marshmallow Root" are filled with material labeled incense, but police call it synthetic marijuana.

"Just looking at the package and names of these things, it almost looks like candy," said Police Chief Thomas Grimaldi. "It says on it 'Not For Human Consumption.' For the marketers, and I use that word loosely, that's their way around it."

Grimaldi gave a slide show presentation to the Board of Education recently to alert local educators, parents and students that the controlled substance is being marketed to children.

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I find it a bit alarming that the New Haven Register is so desperate for letters to the editor that they now are publishing letters from around the country supporting legalizing marijuana. I read the musings of people that sound like they are living in the '60s in a Volks van with flowers on it in San Francisco. I watched a number of friends smoke grass like it was the answer to all their problems.

Medical marijuana is a joke, as I know many who have it for back pain. No matter if you believe that grass is no worse than alcohol. No matter if you do not believe that it may lead to harder drugs. The reality is in most instances you inhale a hot mixture of tar and other chemicals into your lungs. Why are the AMA and others silent on the dangers of smoking grass? What lengths are we willing to go to find a new thing to tax?

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Reading Cindy O'Neill's letter I have to assume that she or no one close to her has ever experienced terrible pain from cancer or another illness. I watched my wife suffer the pain of dying from cancer for three years. Yes, they gave her strong pain pills - oxycodone, oxycontin, morphine. The prescriptions read take one every 12 hours, take one every four hours, take one or two every four hours as needed for pain.

Your comment that only people who are addicts would go for it, not "normal" people, is pretty naive. Given enough pain even normal people will try anything. My wife would have tried it and I am sure the thousands of other normal people suffering terrible pain will try it. It might be a better bet than all the pain killers she was given. We talked about it, but where were we going to get it?

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My great-grandparents gifted my Grandpa with a tavern, at Church & Chapel Streets in New Haven, when Gramps graduated from NYU. The year was 1924. The extensive array of liquor covered the walls of the back bar, behind the restaurant, in vintage photographs.

Fats Waller frequently hung out, there - and the marijuana that they smoked was perfectly legal. The tavern closed, with the repeal of prohibition. I like to imagine that we'd still have had our New Haven tavern, if alcohol hadn't been repealed. Yet, just as repeal was the right thing to do, then, abolishing marijuana prohibition is of utmost importance today.

Unlike with alcohol, America was founded using industrial marijuana products such as canvas, hemp paper, soaps, paints, and so on. The prohibition of cannabis, under the mandated pejorative, "marihuana" (FDR, 1937) is utterly more offensive to American history than alcohol prohibition was.

- - Matthew Stover

Philadelphia, Pa.

[end]

I'm writing about your thoughtful editorial: "States should determine own pot laws" (2-5-14).

I'd like to add that the cannabis legalization issue is not whether cannabis is completely safe for everybody, including children and adolescents; it is not. The issue is freedom of choice for adults. Children have died from eating peanuts and peanut butter but we don't cage peanut growers, sellers or consumers.

And the voters of Colorado and Washington state have decided that we should not arrest and jail cannabis growers, sellers or consumers.

Connecticut adults have the freedom of choice of whether or not to consume legal alcohol. Shouldn't they have the same freedom of choice regarding legal cannabis?

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.

[end]

In response to Cindy O'Neill's belief that marijuana will only benefit addicts:

Cindy you've obviously never watched a loved one die a slow, excruciating death; or known someone who did receive relief from your so-called stronger pills, but was still left with nausea and drastic weight loss from chemo.

It's been proven with medical research that marijuana does help cancer patients, people with nerve damage pain and, yes, those with anxiety, to name a few. You will find it is no longer the nickel bag from the street helping these people. There are now many different strains, each containing different medical properties responding to different illnesses. They have even recently discovered a strain that will alleviate seizures in children with epilepsy and other brain disorders; would you deny them the chance at living a normal life?

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Prohibitionist government and politicians orchestrated cannabis (marijuana) prohibition and citizens don't care how it ends (Editorial: States Should Determine Own Pot Laws, Feb. 5, 2014), as long as it is immediately. It's one of America's worst policy failures in history. The plant never should have been labeled a Schedule I substance alongside heroin while methamphetamine and cocaine are only Schedule II substances.

There are numerous options for government to end this discredited devil law before the end of the day. Citizens know cannabis prohibition is discredited and could end today and have demonstrated they're not waiting on snail pace measures to get the job done.

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Drug-related deaths in Connecticut hit their highest point in nearly 10 years last year, according to statistics from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

It's a development that is not surprising to law enforcement and treatment providers throughout the state.

"Mood altering has always been a stubborn problem -- stubborn and persistent," said Alan Mathis, chief executive officer of Liberation Programs, a drug treatment program with facilities in Norwalk, Stamford and Bridgeport. "We've never won the war on drugs."

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A new conventional wisdom is on the rise: Drug prohibition, or "the war on drugs," is a costly flop. It not only failed to cut drug use and associated social ills significantly but has also imposed additional social costs - or "catastrophic harm," as my colleague Radley Balko put it - far exceeding the benefits. Those costs include violent crime linked to the black-market drug trade as well as the mass arrest and incarceration of small-time users, a disproportionate number of whom are African American.

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Am I the only person who sees that this marijuana factory is just a means to let addicts legally use drugs? What's next, heroin-on-demand?

You can't tell me that the average non-addict person who has terrible pain from cancer or another illness would ask for marijuana for pain instead of taking a strong pain pill prescribed by their doctor.

Only people who are addicts would go for it, not normal people. A totally stupid idea, especially since cigarettes and their smoke is banned everywhere - but marijuana smoke is a godsend to people in pain?

If you've never smoked it, you're not going to ask for it. Another example on why our country is going down the drain!

- - Cindy O'Neill

Orange

[end]

I'm writing about your thoughtful editorial: "States should determine own pot laws" (2-5-14).

I'd like to add that the cannabis legalization issue is not whether cannabis is completely safe for everybody, including children and adolescents; it is not.

The issue is freedom of choice for adults. Children have died from eating peanuts and peanut butter but we don't cage peanut growers, sellers or consumers.

And the voters of Colorado and Washington state have decided that we should not arrest and jail cannabis growers, sellers or consumers.

Connecticut adults have the freedom of choice of whether or not to consume legal alcohol. Shouldn't they have the same freedom of choice regarding legal cannabis?

- - Kirk Muse Mesa, AZ

[end]

I felt pretty good heading into Black History Month. I ended 2013 on a high note, had settled quite nicely into my new job as metro editor at the Register and with the help of newsroom staff, had put together a good group of stories that represented a crosssection of the black community.

So I was feeling a bit heady on the eve of Black History Month as I sat down to edit a story about a man awarded a site in West Haven to grow "medical marijuana."

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A national anti-marijuana organization announced Monday it would join forces with a state group, and warned legalization efforts are poised to create a public health crisis in the form of the "next Big Tobacco."

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, founded in January 2013 by former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I., and Kevin A. Sabet, a former White House policy adviser, announced at a press conference it would work with the Connecticut Association of Prevention Practitioners.

Sabet said the marijuana movement that has led to the drug's legal, recreational use in Colorado and Washington state is being driven by money and is not a "mom and pop" industry. It is "multimillion dollar, multinational conglomerate," he said.

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