Winfield at signing: “We didn’t just talk about equity. We built it in.”
It’s official: Gov. Ned Lamont gave the final needed signature Tuesday to make recreational cannabis use legal in Connecticut for adults over 21 as of July 1.
Adults may possess up to 1.5 ounces of weed “on their person” and up to five ounces “in their homes or locked in their car, truck or glove box.”
“By signing this into law today, we are helping our state move beyond this terrible period of incarceration and injustice” that did “little to protect public health and safety,” Gov. Lamont stated. “We had a chance to learn from others” to “get it right.”
New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield helped shepherd the bill to passage as co-chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. He attended Tuesday’s bill-signing, as did State Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney of New Haven.
The bill was altered in the final days to meet a demand by Gov. Lamont that it eliminate language that would enable people from wealthy towns with prior marijuana-related convictions to benefit from “equity” provisions aimed at helping victims of the War on Drugs to enter the retail marketplace.
“We all had to make some compromises along the way,” Lamont noted. “That’s what good government is all about.”
At the bill-signing, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz noted the “irony” of the fact that the State Senate passed the bill “50 years to the day that President Nixon declared a War on Drugs, and really a war on people of color in our country.” She noted that other states preceded Connecticut in legalizing recreational use of cannabis, but argued that the state is “leading the way” in doing so in a way that takes “equity” into account.
“We had the benefit of looking at the experience in other states. Our focus was not just in creating a revenue stream .. but looking at the communities that were most harmed” and “people who had their lives permanently blighted,” Looney said. “It’s a proud moment for all of us.”
The Connecticut Medical Society opposed the law, raising alarms about potential effects especially on young people. (Click here to read more about that.) “We believe the recreational use of marijuana is bad science, bad policy, and dangerous to Connecticut’s public health,” Society President Gregory Shangold stated in a release issued upon the governor’s bill-signing. Two State Senate GOP leaders, Kevin Kelly and Paul Formica, issued a release calling the law’s passage a “calamity”: “The advice of doctors who fiercely opposed the bill and the science was ignored. … Legalization of marijuana will increase access for children. Despite other states’ best efforts to limit the purchase of legal marijuana to only adults, the downstream effect is a troubling increase in youth use.”
Watch the bill-signing, then a question-and-answer session with reporters, in the above video.
Other highlights of the new law, according to a summary from the governor’s office and from other public officials:
• Retailers are expected to begin selling cannabis products in the state by the end of 2022. They’ll need a state license.
• “Individuals who are not licensed by the state may gift cannabis to others but may not sell it. Individuals may not gift cannabis to another individual who has “paid” or “donated” for another product.”
• New Haven (and other communities with more than 50,000 people) can set rules about where in public people can smoke or vape weed. They will have to set aside a public space where it’s allowed. “You didn’t want to turn the New Haven Green into a smoking-free for all. So you’ll have a dedicated area for public consumption,” stated Hamden State Rep. Michael D’Agostino. Smaller communities may ban public consumption outright.
• Medical marijuana patients participating in a state program may grow up to three mature and three immature plants in their homes starting Oct. 1; all adults 21 and over may do so beginning July 1, 2023. If you grow up to six plants at home, that’s still illegal for now, but starting July 1 it is no longer a felony, but “instead will result in infractions.”
• The state will automatically wipe from criminal records “certain cannabis-related convictions” from between Jan. 1, 2000 through Oct. 1, 2015. People will be able to petition to have convictions from other dates erased.
• A newly created Social Equity Council will help the state grant more than half the retail licenses to people from “communities that have been most negatively impacted by the so-called war on drugs.”
• Local cities and towns will receive proceeds from a 3 percent municipal sales tax on cannabis. Customers will also pay a 6.35 percent state sales tax and an additional tax based on THC content.
• A Social Equity and Innovation Fund will help direct some cannabis tax revenues to communities harmed by the War on Drugs. Some other portions of the revenue collected will “support substance misuse prevention, treatment, and recovery services.”
• Enforcement: Cops will receive training in how to detect impaired driving due to cannabis; retailers will have to comply with “strict packaging and labeling standards”; child-safe packaging will be required, and advertising is prohibited within 500 feet of a school and in any media outlets unless it can be proved that “more than 90 percent of the audience reached by the advertising is at least 21 years of age or older.”
• Employers may continue enforcing drug-free workplaces, but may not “take adverse action against an employee or potential employee for use of cannabis prior to applying for or working” at the job.
Read more about the law’s passage in this report by CT News Junkie’s Hugh McQuaid.