Category: Digital Journalism

What will Mar­i­jua­na Legal­iza­tions mean in CT?
By: Hen­ry Wyard
Newswrit­ing 2 Decem­ber 2016

Will Connecticut Be The Next Green State?

 

When a Bethel Con­necti­cut high­school stu­dent was arrest­ed dur­ing his junior year at school for hav­ing less than an ounce of mar­i­jua­na on him, he nev­er imag­ined how his life would change. How­ev­er, he found him­self expelled from his school, a change that would affect him to this day.  “Back when I was in school, there was a dif­fer­ent stig­ma about mar­i­jua­na… there was a thought that it was a hor­ri­ble drug that would ruin your life. Maybe if I had been caught today, some dif­fer­ent action would have been taken.”

That was in 2010, one year before a bill would pass in Con­necti­cut decrim­i­nal­iz­ing the pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na up to 1 ounce. Tech­ni­cal­ly, Steve Weiss would still have been a minor at this time, which would have result­ed in a 60-day sus­pen­sion of his license, but the pub­lic view of mar­i­jua­na has cer­tain­ly changed since then. Weiss said that he used to use mar­i­jua­na as many as three times a week when he was in high school, while “hang­ing out with friends and to relax,” but said he had not used mar­i­jua­na in the last year because of his work. As more and more states push for ref­er­en­dums meant to reg­u­late and tax the recre­ation­al usage of mar­i­jua­na, the ques­tion of whether or not this would be a pos­i­tive change for Con­necti­cut arises.

Mar­i­jua­na is cur­rent­ly cat­e­go­rized as a Sched­ule 1 drug by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, which places it among drugs like hero­in, LSD, and Ecsta­sy. These drugs are said to have no med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fit, and their cat­e­go­riza­tion lim­its doc­tors from pre­scrib­ing the drugs as med­ica­tion. With that being said, mar­i­jua­na has been used in Amer­i­ca for decades both recre­ation­al­ly and for self medication.

It was not until 1996 when any legal move­ment was made. Propo­si­tion 215 passed by major­i­ty pub­lic vote (54 per­cent) to legal­ize the usage of mar­i­jua­na for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es in Cal­i­for­nia. Since then, 24 oth­er states have deemed mar­i­jua­na to have med­i­c­i­nal qual­i­ties ben­e­fi­cial enough to prompt legalization.

It is of note that Propo­si­tion 215 passed despite not going through the stan­dard Food and Drug Administration’s test­ing for safe­ty and effi­ca­cy. Oppo­nents of legal­iza­tion point toward insuf­fi­cient research as a pri­ma­ry rea­son behind their views, Scott Chip­man of the Cit­i­zens Against Legal­iz­ing Mar­i­jua­na said

“The truth in the mat­ter is that sci­ence has not had enough time yet to do an ade­quate job in research­ing the long term health effects of mar­i­jua­na usage. The increased poten­cy of mar­i­jua­na today is much high­er com­pared to what it used to be. There sim­ply has not been enough research to accu­rate­ly pre­dict effects of long term usage.”

Con­verse­ly, pro­po­nents of mar­i­jua­na legal­iza­tion have their sights set past just med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fits, and towards recre­ation­al usage. It was not until recent­ly that their efforts had any suc­cess, when in 2014 the usage of mar­i­jua­na for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es was approved in the state of Col­orado. The unprece­dent­ed Amer­i­can pol­i­cy was the result of Col­orado Amend­ment 64, which passed by pop­u­lar vote (55 per­cent) on Nov. 12, 2012.

The amend­ment would come to be known as the “Cannabis Pol­i­cy of Col­orado,” which ulti­mate­ly led to the legal­iza­tion of recre­ation­al usage for adults 21 and over, start­ing on Jan. 1, 2014. The pol­i­cy also came with oth­er stip­u­la­tions, name­ly the state con­trol of com­mer­cial cul­ti­va­tion, man­u­fac­ture, and sale. Basi­cal­ly, the gov­ern­ing body of the state of Col­orado became in charge of the mar­ket and was able to reg­u­late and tax the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mar­i­jua­na. Mar­i­jua­na in Col­orado became reg­u­lat­ed in ways sim­i­lar to how alco­hol is reg­u­lat­ed and taxed nationally.

Wash­ing­ton, Alas­ka, Ore­gon, and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia fol­lowed the lead of of Col­orado and became the only oth­er places to date where mar­i­jua­na can be used recre­ation­al­ly. With legal­iza­tion appear­ing to gain momen­tum through­out the coun­try, ques­tions arise for the remain­ing states. Should they fol­low suit?

 

Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut grad­u­ate John Hudak is the Deputy Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Effec­tive Pub­lic Man­age­ment and Senior Fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tute based in Wash­ing­ton D.C. The Brook­ings Insti­tute is a non­prof­it pub­lic pol­i­cy orga­ni­za­tion that research­es new ideas to solve issues in Amer­i­ca. Hudak wrote a book titled Mar­i­jua­na: A Short His­to­ry in which he traces the his­to­ry of America’s laws and atti­tudes towards cannabis.

Hudak spoke about the unusu­al and unprece­dent­ed legal sta­tus of Mar­i­jua­na in Amer­i­ca, at a talk at UConn this past week. “One of the only places in his­to­ry where some­thing has been total­ly ille­gal at the fed­er­al lev­el, but ful­ly legal in some states.”

Hudak said that this unusu­al cir­cum­stance caus­es a rip­ple effect in pol­i­cy, where own­ers of mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­saries are not treat­ed like a nor­mal busi­ness in the eyes of the gov­ern­ment. “You can’t write any­thing off your tax­es. Why? Because it is ille­gal fed­er­al­ly. Despite that, they are sup­posed to pay every bit of their fed­er­al tax­es.” Hudak said this can place up to a 175% tax bur­den on rev­enue, which can make it more dif­fi­cult for these busi­ness to stay afloat. Addi­tion­al­ly, own­ers of mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­saries do not have access to any sort of bank­ing ser­vices, bar­ring a busi­ness loan or a line of cred­it. While this is a prob­lem for busi­ness own­ers in states that have passed laws reg­u­lat­ing recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na, road­blocks remain for states that have only legal­ized mar­i­jua­na for med­ical use.

Accord­ing to Bill 5387, the Leg­isla­tive Com­mis­sion­er of the Con­necti­cut House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives approved the usage of med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na on April 27, 2012. The bill was con­sid­ered effec­tive start­ing on Oct. 1 of the same year.

On the state gov­ern­ment web­site, it states that patients can reg­is­ter for a med­ical mar­i­jua­na cer­tifi­cate if they are a Con­necti­cut res­i­dents being treat­ed for a debil­i­tat­ing med­ical con­di­tion by a Con­necti­cut-licensed physi­cian. How­ev­er, the def­i­n­i­tion of what is “debil­i­tat­ing,” is impor­tant to under­stand. A patient can­not sim­ply walk into their doctor’s office and demand a mar­i­jua­na cer­tifi­cate because of a sore tooth. Among the med­ical con­di­tions that make a patient eli­gi­ble for med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na usage are: can­cer, glau­co­ma, epilep­sy, Crohn’s dis­ease, and oth­er seri­ous med­ical conditions.

Some­thing unique about med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na in Con­necti­cut is that up until recent­ly, minors were not eli­gi­ble to qual­i­fy for it. Accord­ing to the state gov­ern­ment web­site, as of Oct. 1, 2016, minors became eli­gi­ble to be con­sid­ered for med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na. Gov. Dan­nel P. Mal­loy signed House Bill 5450, which allows minors to qual­i­fy if they have cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions. Qual­i­fy­ing minors must have seri­ous debil­i­tat­ing med­ical con­di­tions to be con­sid­ered. A few of the con­di­tions are: Cere­bral Pal­sy, Cys­tic Fibro­sis, Severe Epilep­sy, and/or a ter­mi­nal ill­ness, among others.

In order to open a med­ical mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary in Con­necti­cut, a few expen­sive steps need to be tak­en in order for the state to approve the open­ing of a dis­pen­sary said Hudak. A poten­tial own­er would need to apply for a license which can cost up to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. An addi­tion­al 1.5 mil­lion needs to be placed in an escrow account, which is essen­tial­ly an unaf­fil­i­at­ed third par­ty. The prob­lem with this, said Hudak, is that it lim­its the mar­i­jua­na indus­try to a cer­tain demographic.

“Typ­i­cal­ly the type of per­son that has the mon­ey to open a mar­i­jua­na dis­pen­sary are white, rich, old­er men,” said Hudak.

While recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na is not legal in Con­necti­cut at this point in time, there has been some legal move­ment. Accord­ing to the Mar­i­jua­na Pol­i­cy Project, pos­ses­sion of a half-ounce or less of mar­i­jua­na was decrim­i­nal­ized in 2011.

A first-time offense is pun­ish­able by a fine up to $150, mean­ing it is not an offense that can war­rant jail time. Sub­se­quent offens­es are sub­ject to increased fines rang­ing from $200 to $500. Upon a third offense, offend­ers are referred to a drug aware­ness pro­gram, and if they are under 21, face a 60-day sus­pen­sion of their driver’s license.

The states that have approved the usage of recre­ation­al mar­i­jua­na all have one thing in com­mon, the approved bills came from the results of a bal­lot ini­tia­tive process. In Con­necti­cut, bills are not decid­ed by a pop­u­lar vote, and instead by state leg­is­la­tors. As a result, elect­ed offi­cials would be the ones respon­si­ble for pass­ing a bill legal­iz­ing the recre­ation­al use of marijuana.

Gra­ham Pulis­ton (22) has been using mar­i­jua­na recre­ation­al­ly and med­ical­ly for the last 5 years. A Con­necti­cut res­i­dent, Teed said he often won­ders what life would be like if mar­i­jua­na were to be ful­ly legal­ized in Con­necti­cut. Although Pulis­ton uses mar­i­jua­na “sev­er­al” times a week, he said he is unsure if legal­iza­tion would be total­ly pos­i­tive for the com­mu­ni­ty around him.

“I think mar­i­jua­na has a ton of ben­e­fits, and can real­ly be ben­e­fi­cial for peo­ple who suf­fer from anx­i­ety and oth­er med­ical con­di­tions. It seems pos­si­ble that legal­iza­tion would give chil­dren greater access to mar­i­jua­na which I think could poten­tial­ly be harmful.”

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Drug Abuse, mar­i­jua­na is the most com­mon­ly used illic­it drug in the Unit­ed States. A 2013 sur­vey con­duct­ed by the NIH esti­mat­ed that there were 19.8 mil­lion cur­rent mar­i­jua­na users, about 7.5 per­cent of peo­ple 12 years or old­er. State legal­iza­tion did not start until 2014, which means that a major­i­ty of these users obtained mar­i­jua­na ille­gal­ly. These nar­cot­ic deals can be dan­ger­ous; as poten­tial buy­ers are pur­chas­ing illic­it drugs through crim­i­nals. Legal­iza­tion and sub­se­quent gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion would aim to elim­i­nate a black mar­ket that would oth­er­wise nev­er disappear.

The great­est ben­e­fit towards the pos­si­ble legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na in Con­necti­cut, that pro­po­nents of legal­iza­tion are push­ing for would be the increased tax rev­enue. Accord­ing to the Tax Foun­da­tion, a group that research­es Tax in Amer­i­ca, in Col­orado, Propo­si­tion AA was passed in Novem­ber of 2013. The bill estab­lished the state’s right to tax mar­i­jua­na, begin­ning with the sale of mar­i­jua­na state-wide in Jan­u­ary of 2015.

 

In 2014 the state of Col­orado col­lect­ed $56 mil­lion in tax­es from med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na. Once Propo­si­tion AA was passed, offi­cials esti­mat­ed that the 2015 tax income to be around $70 mil­lion. In 2015, the state of Col­orado actu­al­ly col­lect­ed $113 mil­lion in mar­i­jua­na tax­es, a 101 per­cent increase from 2013. Offi­cials esti­mate that tax rev­enue will be upwards of $140 mil­lion in 2016, a 150 per­cent increase from 2014.

The rea­son­ing behind the the mas­sive increase in tax dol­lars is the struc­ture of mar­i­jua­na is taxed. Accord­ing to the Tax Foun­da­tion, a 15 per­cent excise on tax is the “aver­age mar­ket rate” of whole­sale mar­i­jua­na. That is added to a 10 per­cent state tax on retail mar­i­jua­na sales plus the stan­dard state sales tax of 2.9 per­cent plus local sales tax plus local mar­i­jua­na tax­es such as a 3.5 per­cent tax in Den­ver. Over­all, tax­es are about 29 per­cent over­all of what the ini­tial price would be. For com­par­i­son, the equiv­a­lent Col­orado tax on cig­a­rettes is about 31 per­cent while beer is only 8 percent.

 

 

 

-Hen­ry Wyard