Legal Cannabis Comes to Connecticut

Governor Ned Lamont is expected to sign the bill, after previously claiming that it didn’t go far enough to address the wrongs of the war on drugs.

“It’s fitting that the bill legalizing the adult use of cannabis and addressing the injustices caused by the war of drugs received final passage today, on the 50-year anniversary of President Nixon declaring the war.” Governor Lamont said yesterday in a statement after the bill cleared its final hurdles on the way to his desk.

Governor Lamont went on to point out that opening Connecticut’s market makes sense given the fact that the state is surrounded by legal cannabis.

1201 includes expungement of lower-level cannabis records and dedicates the bulk of excise tax revenues to a Social Equity and Innovation Fund, which will be used to promote a diverse cannabis industry and reinvest in hard-hit communities.

But the center of much of the debate in the week prior to the victory was who actually would qualify for equity programs. Many argued that the language Lamont favored made things a lot murkier around delineating a clear line of ownership from the communities impacted by the war on drugs to the state’s forthcoming legal market.

The devil’s advocate argument in Lamont’s favor is that not everyone impacted personally by the drug war ended up in handcuffs.

“So, in the beginning of the campaign, we had seven demands that we outlined, which was the difference between HB 6377 and the Governor’s bill, including home grow, priority licenses for equity, including our native tribes, protection for students, and we got all seven of them,” said Jason Ortiz, a longtime Connecticut cannabis advocate who also helped found the Minority Cannabis Business Association.

The argument in favor of using criminal history as a main qualifier in equity programs is that it is the most surefire way to make sure the program’s resources are being dedicated to people who directly had their lives impacted by enforcement.

This victory will add to the momentum towards cannabis policy reform in other states and at the federal level,” says Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project.

“Connecticut is just the latest domino to fall as states begin to repeal their failed prohibition of marijuana and replace it with a sensible system of legalization and regulation.

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