All posts in Connecticut News

Lila McKinley, a DCP staff attorney, said department officials consulted with microbiologists in making the decision to leave the proposed limit at 100,000 colony-forming units. The decision was made because the state didn’t think commenters took all factors into account, including the Aspergillus testing requirement.

A file photo of a police cruiser’s emergency lights. Ron Chapple / Getty Image Law enforcement found cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs, as well as more than $400,000 in cash, in suspicious packages destined for Connecticut this month, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. During the first two weeks of March, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Narcotics and Bulk Cash Trafficking Task Force seized more than 30 suspicious packages in an interdiction. After court-authorized searches, law enforcement found 24 kilograms of cocaine, 3.5 kilograms of fentanyl, 11 kilograms of marijuana, other drugs and $420,000 in cash, the U.S. Attorney’s Office…

Legislators are dealing with an issue that they might not have imagined just a few years ago: The acceptable amount of mold in marijuana. But for some patients who use medical marijuana, the question isn’t a novelty but a serious matter of health. At the end of last year, the state Department of Consumer Protection proposed a change that would set the maximum amount of colony-forming mold and yeast units in medical marijuana at 100,000 per gram and would allow no traceable amounts of a breed of mold called Aspergillus that is known to cause a lung infection. Previously, the…

WALLINGFORD — A local mariachi teacher accused of sexually abusing two boys in Connecticut was convicted of having sexual contact with a teenage student more than a decade ago through a high school music program in Nevada, according to court documents. Adam Romo, 37, of Portland, was arrested March 17 and charged with two counts second-degree sexual assault, two-counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and six counts risk of injury to a child. The warrant for Romo’s arrest alleges he began sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy who attended a mariachi music program he founded in summer 2021. The warrant also alleges…

A Connecticut legislative committee’s recent action to provide $3 million to explore psychedelic-assisted therapy using doctor-supervised MDMA or psilocybin is a great step forward in the field, according to two Institute of Living physicians. Both Dr. Godfrey Pearlson, founding director of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center at Hartford HealthCare’s Institute of Living and an expert in the fields of marijuana and of psychosis, and Dr. Mirjana Domakonda, Director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the Institute of Living, greeted the action by the legislature’s Public Health Committee. “This area is really promising, but it’s still really only partly understood,” said…

Each year, medical marijuana patients must pay a $100 fee to the state to obtain a medical marijuana certificate, and $25 per year for certificates for their caregivers. These fees — which amount to about $5.3 million in total each year — effectively, and unfairly, tax medical marijuana patients for access to their medication. No other medical treatment or therapy requires such fees or taxes and, unlike prescription drugs, medical marijuana is a cash-only market. It is not covered by insurance of any sort, so patients must bear the full cost out-of-pocket.

Even in the 18 U.S. states where recreational marijuana use is legal, it is still a federal crime to use it. Now, lawmakers in Congress are trying to establish some continuity between state and federal laws on cannabis use.  Recreational use of marijuana is currently legal in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, the District of Columbia, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Michigan, Vermont, Illinois, Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, New Mexico and Connecticut. Using cannabis for medical purposes is legal 37 states, including Hawaii and Missouri.  “Cannabis should be legalized in this country. States are individually moving in that direction….