Prohibition of a popular commodity is useless. Endless games of cops-and-robbers result. These games weed out amateur merchants, leaving only solid, well organized criminal enterprises. Prohibition of alcohol established the mafia in America. Prohibition of marijuana established the drug cartels in Mexico. The law boasts when the boss (or jefe) is captured or killed, but the organization runs itself. Alcohol is a dangerous drug. Find out. Ask any doctor. But it remains popular. Marijuana may have consequences yet unknown, despite centuries of use. We will find out, because it remains popular. Whether we like it or not, people will continue to drink, smoke and toke.

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Town Resident Who Is Also a Detective in Westerly Outlines Concerns in an Email to the First Selectman

Stonington - A veteran Westerly Police Department detective who lives in Pawcatuck has criticized the Stonington police department's drug enforcement efforts in an email to First Selectman Ed Haberek.

In his March email, Detective Steven Johnson said he has "witnessed multiple hand to hand drug deals, in the open, in Downtown Pawcatuck."

He added that he is aware that on a daily basis, drug deals are being conducted in a local parking lot.

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Good news, people: I survived ingesting a "brain poison," easily operated a Hertz rental car an hour or two afterward without killing anybody and lived to tell the tale. Dr. Arthur Taub, a retired clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine, wrote a hysterical letter to the New Haven Register after I reported in my column last week that I ate one-third of a 10-milligram marijuana cookie outside a legal cannabis shop in Boulder, Colorado.

"Marijuana is a brain poison," the good doctor began. "It is an uncontrolled mixture of long acting brain-destructive neurotoxins and carcinogens."

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Regarding Randall Beach's Aug. 22 column, the people of Colorado and Washington state are way ahead of the politicians in Washington, D.C. The days when Congress can get away with confusing the drug war's tremendous collateral damage with a comparatively harmless plant are coming to an end. If the goal of marijuana prohibition is to subsidize violent drug cartels, prohibition is a grand success. The drug war distorts supply and demand dynamics so that big money grows on little trees.

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Vacationing in Colorado these days now gives you a chance to experience far more than what John Denver long ago hailed as a "Rocky Mountain high."

Oh yes, my wife and I did travel around Rocky Mountain Park last week when we went out to visit my sister in Boulder. The Rockies are breathtaking, fabulous to behold.

But there were other memorable spots on our itinerary, including a store called Cannabis in Nederland and another retail outlet, the Village Green Society in Boulder. (We also saw ads for Cannabis Station, Kindman Marijuana, Heads of State, the Weed Show, Green Fields, Cannasseur, etc.)

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NORTH HAVEN - After trying various outlets to reach the community about drug awareness and prevention, First Selectman Michael Freda and substance abuse advocates are heading into people's homes - on the television screen that is.

In an effort to raise awareness about drug and alcohol abuse, Freda and members of the town's Substance Abuse Action Council are taping a miniseries of TV shows discussing various topics surrounding substance abuse.

Freda said the idea for the show surfaced after attempts to hold public discussions about drug and alcohol prevention.

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TORRINGTON The city's police department and a local substance abuse agency are holding a ribbon cutting Thursday morning for the launching of a prescription drug drop box program.

The pill drop off box was installed inside the Torrington Police Department's lobby in April but was not immediately ready for use. The box was installed with the help of the McCall Foundation, a local, private nonprofit behavioral healthcare agency that provides substance abuse treatment.

The release said the foundation received a grant from the state's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to help establish the pill drop off program.

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The type of responsible reporting by Day Staff Writer Judy Benson on June 18, "Group urges wariness amid marijuana push: 'We need to stop this train'," is doing the country a big favor and may help wake up some of our politicians, attorneys general and judges before another public health crisis occurs like is happening in overgrown-pot Colorado.

Kevin Sabet, former senior drug policy officer to the White House, warned a large audience of professionals at Connecticut College that there is ample evidence from Colorado that legalization was a mistake . and that Connecticut should take heed. There may be no stopping the momentum for legalizing pot and playing into the quest by "Big Marijuana" to reap big profits.

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Where Pot Has Been Legalized, Group Warns of Tactics Formerly Used by Big Tobacco

New London - Calling on his audience to help "stop the next public health crisis from happening," Kevin Sabet, former senior drug policy adviser to the White House, said corporate interests are funding the push for legalization of marijuana, and that public misinformation and the assumption that there's no stopping the momentum for legalizing pot are playing into the quest by "Big Marijuana" to reap huge profits from this new market.

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LEWISTON, Maine (AP) - Activists who succeeded in legalizing possession of marijuana for recreational use in Portland are now turning their attention to three more Maine communities.

David Boyer from the Maine Marijuana Project says activists will be at polling places Tuesday to seek 1,000 signatures in Lewiston and South Portland to force local referendums the issue. They'll also be seeking 100 signatures to put the matter before the Town Council in York.

The proposal is similar to one enacted by Portland voters in November except that the amount of marijuana would be smaller - 1 ounce instead of 2.5 ounces.

Boyer said the smaller amount is in line with voter-approved marijuana laws in Colorado and Washington. It would remain illegal to use marijuana in public or for those under 21 to have it.

[end]

In the last chapter, I covered how not to get high. In this one, I will cover how to get high.

After my admission that I did a foolish thing in Denver-failing to realize that consuming a single square, about a quarter, of a pot candy bar was dicey for an edibles virgin - many in the pot industry upbraided me for doing a foolish thing.

But some in Mary Jane world have contacted me to say that my dysphoria (i.e., bummer) is happening more and more in Colorado.

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If there is one thing you can say about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, it is that she knows her brand. Even when she has a bad high in Colorado and uses it as the peg for a column on the messy process of marijuana legalization, she does not lose sight of her Dowdisms. Dowd may have lost her mind via mis-dosage, but in writing about it, she stays on message by describing "my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand," blaming a girlish affinity for chocolate for her misfortune and confessing her stoned fascination with the green corduroy jeans she was wearing at the time.

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If there is one thing you can say about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, it is that she knows her brand. Even when she has a bad high in Colorado and uses it as the peg for a column on the messy process of marijuana legalization, she does not lose sight of her Dowdisms. Dowd may have lost her mind via mis-dosage, but in writing about it, she stays on message by describing "my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand," blaming a girlish affinity for chocolate for her misfortune and confessing her stoned fascination with the green corduroy jeans she was wearing at the time.

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New London - Ledge Light Health District and seven substance abuse prevention coalitions throughout Connecticut will present, "Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana with Dr. Kevin Sabet," from 9 to 11 a.m. June 17.

The forum will take place in the 1941 Room in the College Center at Crozier Williams at Connecticut College.

The purpose is to inform state and local policymakers about this important public health issue. Sabet will discuss marijuana's impact on youth, the importance of preventing another "Big Tobacco," legal reform, as well as the latest data and experiences from Colorado and Washington. He is the co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and past senior advisory for policy to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He started the movement to educate the community on medical marijuana and he is concerned with the national trend toward legalization.

State and local policy makers are invited.

Ledge Light is the public health agency that serves East Lyme, Groton, Ledyard, New London and Waterford.

[end]

Months before any cannabis-based products will reach patients, Connecticut's new medical-marijuana industry has already created hundreds of jobs -- in construction.

Former factories are being reconfigured into secure pharmaceutical facilities for the growing, harvesting, curing and preparation of various strains of marijuana that should be delivered to the state's dispensaries by early fall.

Since the state awarded four marijuana producer licenses in January, an estimated $20 million has been committed to the West Haven, Watertown, Portland and Simsbury buildings that in a few weeks will begin growing thousands of pounds of pot.

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Last month, NBC News ran a series of stories about the United States' "growing heroin epidemic." Last month, NBC News ran a series of stories about the United States' "growing heroin epidemic." Two things stand out in the reports: One is their sympathetic tone; the other is that almost everyone depicted is white.

Drug users and their families aren't vilified; there is no panicked call for police enforcement. Instead, and appropriately, there is a call for treatment and rehabilitation. Parents of drug addicts express love for their children, and everyone agrees they need support to get clean.

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Letter writer Ron Johnson proves that cannabis causes irrational and illogical thinking in those who don't use it. His statement about it being a "gateway drug" has been thoroughly disproven. Using his logic one could deduce that nearly 100 percent of heroin addicts drank milk as a child, so milk must be a gateway drug.

Recent studies have provided that cannabis use does not cause cancer, so his statements about health consequences are similarly off base. The truth is the only reason anyone dies of a heroin overdose is because of prohibition. If they could buy this drug from legal sources with known purity and accurate dosage information overdoses would disappear.

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Regarding the Buzz poll [May 12, "Should State Legalize Pot?"], why is so much evidence surrounding this issue being ignored?

There are numerous ongoing studies from New York to New Zealand on the negative effects of marijuana.

In the 1960s, as a student nurse, I learned that the substance could alter genes. At that time, the amount of THC in a joint was about 2 percent. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, today the average joint is 12%.

No one denies the plant succeeds in relieving chemo-induced nausea, but there are synthetic meds in pill form (nabilone and dronabinol) that are FDA-approved that accomplish the same thing.

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BETHEL -- After weeks of looking for a place to open a medical marijuana dispensary, and with a Thursday deadline looming, a Trumbull company finally found a home in an empty building on Garella Road near Interstate 84.

D&B Wellness Inc. had to secure zoning approval somewhere to receive one of six state licenses to operate a dispensary.

The company had failed twice -- once in Stratford and again in Bridgeport -- and seemed likely to be turned down in Redding as well.

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Georgetown could be home to Fairfield County's first medical marijuana dispensary.

Angela D'Amico and Karen Barski of D & B Wellness LLC presented a plan to establish a pharmaceutical dispensary store at 12 Old Mill Road to the Water Pollution Control Commission (WPCC) during a special meeting on Monday, May 5.

The WPCC oversees the Georgetown wastewater treatment facility that serves customers in Georgetown. The commission questioned the amount of water to be used by the dispensary.

The location has one bathroom and one hand-washing sink, so the commission approved an allocation of up to 100 gallons per day of water for the 1,600-square-foot building.

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