PANEL VOICES HIGH HOPES FOR HEMP

If Gov. Dannel Malloy gets his way, possessing under one ounce of
marijuana will no longer be a crime in the state of
Connecticut.

At a conversation sponsored by the Yale College Democrats Monday night
in the Branford Common Room, four panelists involved in government and
the law discussed the decriminalization of marijuana before an
audience of 20 students. Though they agreed that bills currently under
consideration would save money for the government and reduce the
number of prisoners statewide, each of the speakers said that concerns
about appearing to publicly endorse marijuana use might impede
decriminalization.

"The laws will only change when public opinion changes," said Mike
Lawlor, Connecticut's undersecretary of criminal justice policy and
planning at the Office of Policy Management. "The sad thing is that we
spend more money running prisons than we do public colleges."

Lawlor said that Malloy has already introduced a number of bills aimed
at reducing the prison population and cutting government debt to the
state legislature. He cited one bill that would classify the
possession of less than one ounce of marijuana as an infraction,
rather than a criminal offense, with a maximum penalty of $100. By
freeing up both police and the courts from having to prosecute
marijuana cases, he said, the state would save considerable resources,
most importantly time and money.

Christian Young, a criminal defense attorney from Bridgeport who spoke
at the event, agreed that police officers and lawyers are wasting
their time prosecuting marijuana offenses in a judicial system that is
already overworked. He pointed out that 15 states have already passed
decriminalization laws and have not seen any spike in marijuana use.

"Continuing to vilify something that has clear medical benefits is
outrageous," Young said. "The human toll -- where kids are being
arrested and stigmatized as criminals, kicked out of school and forced
to lose their student funding -- has to be fixed."

Joe Brooks, a retired police officer and representative for Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, said that the criminalization of
marijuana is based in racial history and that a disproportionate
amount of minorities are arrested for possession.

"The War On Drugs is ridiculous and a failure," he said. "Anyone who
disagrees with this has got to have their head in the sand."

Students who attended the talk said that the panelists did a good job
of laying out the arguments in support of decriminalization, but that
full legalization of marijuana would eventually be the right policy to
institute. Marina Keegan '12, the president of the Yale College
Democrats, said that advocating legalization would not be prudent in
the current political climate, but that decriminalization will solve
some current problems, like prison overcrowding and cost.

Dalton Johnson '14 and Sarah Cox '14 said that they were frustrated by
the idea of decriminalization being a step in the right direction.
Neither thought that it would go far enough in eliminating a black
market for drugs.

"As long as we're too scared to talk about why possessing marijuana is
criminal in the first place, we won't make any progress," Cox said.
"My dad actually lives in Mexico, and with problems he sees happening
in the drug war there, I think legalization is the most sensible policy."

The Yale College Democrats will be holding a meeting for the lobbying
committee to discuss decriminalizing marijuana Wednesday at 6 p.m..