All posts in Connecticut News

Portland, Oregon activists are mounting a push to have local lawmakers pass a resolution decriminalizing the cultivation, gifting and ceremonial use of a wide range of psychedelics. It’s a move that they say would fill the gap between historic statewide drug policy reform initiatives approved by voters in November. While those successful ballot measures legalized psilocybin therapy and decriminalized possession of all currently illicit drugs, the Plant Medicine Healing Alliance (PMHA) says the policies leave some important activity at risk of criminalization. The new local resolution they are asking the the City Commission to pass would make it so that…

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D), who’s working to build support among lawmakers for his proposal to legalize marijuana, recently asked New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) how she got a legal cannabis through her state legislature this year. Lujan Grisham revealed in a new podcast interview that her Connecticut counterpart called for advice and she told him to consider decoupling legalization from related social justice proposals in order to make both easier to pass. “Putting that all in one new industry approach, I think, is problematic, and it’s one of the reasons we had to call this special session…

Rep. Gale Mastrofrancesco, R-Wolcott, said the “first priority” should be to target money for substance abuse and mental health treatment. Rep. Sean Scanlon, a Guilford Democrat and House chairman of the finance committee, said final legislation will increase funding for those areas.

CT CannaWarriors Cody Roberts smokes marijuana in front of the state Capitol in Hartford Tuesday afternoon. He and other cannabis equity advocates gathered at the Legislative Office Building and then marched to the state Capitol in support of a bill to legalize recreational marijuana. (Brad Horrigan/The Hartford Courant)

Washington, D.C. lawmakers on Friday held a joint hearing on a pair of bills to authorize the legal sale of recreational marijuana and significantly expand the existing medical cannabis program in the nation’s capital. The District Council’s Committee of the Whole, along with the Judiciary and Public Safety and Business and Economic Development Committees, took testimony from about 100 people on the legislation over the course of several hours. They heard numerous recommendations on the legalization proposal, ranging from enhancing social equity provisions to ensuring that medical cannabis patients continue to have access to their medicine to establishing regulations for…

“I have never felt that the marijuana money should be used to subsidize towns’ operating budgets,” he said. “We should be helping our cities through the PILOT system, which has been around for a long time — just underfunded. But marijuana revenues, to me, should not be a source of revenue for towns, other than the local property tax they can collect. It should go to equity. It should go to helping small businesses in urban areas. Juvenile justice programs and, yes, for treatment and other things like that. So I would agree with the minority leader on that —…

A North Carolina Senate committee on Tuesday approved a revised bill to legalize medical marijuana in the state. This comes one week after the panel held a hearing to discuss the legislation and approve changes, but members did not vote at that prior meeting. Senators advanced the measure this time in a voice vote. A previous version of the reform legislation cleared Judiciary and another committee last month, but it was rereferred earlier this month. The bill must still clear the Senate Health Care and Rules and Operations Committees in order to reach the floor before potentially heading to the…

Recreational marijuana moved closer to reality Tuesday as Democrats in the Judiciary Committee sent the governor’s bill to create a recreational cannabis market to the full General Assembly, even though the proposal, by their own admission, is still half baked. “I will admit to members of this committee at the outset that this bill very much remains a work in progress,” said Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, co-chair of the committee. The 200-plus page bill deals with finance, regulatory and licensing issues, Stafstrom said, but the primary question under the jurisdiction of the judiciary committee Tuesday was whether to legalize recreational…