State Senator Proposes Bill To Decriminalize Marijuana
In his state budget address, Governor Dannel Malloy proposed changes to how Connecticut deals with drug offenders. WNPR’s Jason Cunningham reports on one of four new proposed bills that tackle marijuana reform.
“There are too, there are simply too many people also, who have been arrested for and jailed for minor, non-violent or drug offenses.”
While Governor Malloy didn’t directly address the issue of marijuana reform in his budget proposal, he did talk about "alternative forms of punishment" for those convicted of some minor crimes.
It's something that State Senator Martin Looney has been working on for years. Looney has proposed a bill that aims to establish what he calls a more rational drug policy. The bill would decriminalize the possession of less than one ounce of marijuana and the possession of drug paraphernalia.
“Ah, the cost of processing those low-level, ah, cases within the system are, are, are very high and by changing possession of a small amount of the substance to a, an infraction rather than a misdemeanor, ah those cases would be handled with ah, ah, less of a commitment of resources within the criminal justice system.”
He says that too many people, particularly young people, have had their lives ruined by minor drug charges.
“I think that ah, part of the problem has been we’ve, we have, ah, painted drug enforcement with too broad a brush and we need to be more careful about who we brand as a criminal.”
Catherine LeVasseur, the Program Manager of Safe and Drug-Free Communities at the Governor’s Prevention Partnership, says that her organization doesn’t have an official stance on Looney’s bill. But she also doesn't want legislation to send the wrong message.
"We want to make sure that any, any bill that comes out doesn't send that message to youth saying that, you know, marijuana isn't a drug of concern."
According to LeVasseur, alcohol use is a much bigger problem than marijuana use for young people in Connecticut.
For WNPR, I'm Jason Cunningham.
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It's S.B. 163. Yes, he tried
It's S.B. 163. Yes, he tried to get a similar bill passed in 2009. Many believe that S.B. 163 will pass in 2011, making it worthwhile to bring attention to the bill. S.B. 163 was originally proposed in January. This story is an informational piece- it's news because we'll be seeing/hearing a lot about this bill in the future. S.B. 163 could bring major changes to our state and many still aren't aware of the bill's existence. Many who are aware of S.B. 163 believe that it's Gov. Dannel Malloy's bill opposed to one that he supports. The story itself didn't provided certain elements of information because it needed to fit the time constraints of radio. It's cut down to a minute and 30 seconds because that's the amount of time that needs to be filled. This means that only the bare minimum is used. The original draft of this story actually included the bill's name, the fact that Martin Looney proposed it in 2009 and included quotes from both sources about why the future of this bill looked more optimistic in 2011 than before. I'm sorry that these details couldn't be provided, but that's the nature of the medium. If the News Director considers what's in this story to be the absolute essentials, than the facts presented in this story are likely to be what the average listener will hold onto. The story originally aired on 2/18 and reran on 2/22. If you look at other stories dealing with this information that were published slightly before or after this story aired, you'll see that most don't mention the bill by name or mention that Looney proposed it.
More information, please!
What's the name of the bill? Didn't he propose a bill in 2009? What has changed? How is this news? Did it happen today? What exactly happened to day? Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!!! Need. More. Information!
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