CT Medical Marijuana Bill

The legislature of my state recently passed a bill allowing medically-maligned people to grow up to four stalks in their home of marijuana, and smoke it for medicinal purposes. The governor had not yet said whether she would veto it or not, so for a while prospects were looking good, especially with a recent poll that found that around 80% of Connecticut residents favor medical allowances for marijuana usage. But she ended up vetoing it. At first I disagreed with her decision, but after thinking about her reasons for a while, I realized she had made the right decision.

Her main reason was that the bill had no provisions for how these people were to obtain the marijuana or the seeds for the plants. As a result, they would need to get it from street dealers, illegally. This was actually the primary argument against this bill in the news media, that law-abiding people would have to break the law to get their supply. It would have effectively killed the program before it got off the ground, since most of the sufferers would not be willing to go to such lengths to obtain the marijuana.

And that's whats really important. If this bill had passed, the legislature would've wiped it's hands and said "Well! We're done with that now!" and left a broken law in place for maybe 20 or more years. Instead, by vetoing the bill, Rell has (perhaps unintentionally) forced the legislature to take another go at this idea next year. The arguments about the flaws in this bill may be heeded and dealt with, most importantly that of distribution.