I am fully supportive of the proposed House Bill 5892. I think it is important that Connecticut legislators be aware of the positive changes that could potentially take place for many families, should this bill be passed. Unfortunately, I know of many ill children who could benefit from the use of medical marijuana if it were legal.

It is extremely disheartening that many families have to be displaced and act as "refugees" in order to properly care for their ill loved ones. The use of medical marijuana has been extremely effective for many children just like Cyndimae Meehan, in ways that traditional anti-epileptic drugs have not.

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Amid all the uncertainties surrounding the legalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia, a few things are clear. Among them is that Congress has better things to do than meddle in the purely local affairs of the District.

That District officials and employees have been threatened with jail, by no less than the chairman of a powerful congressional committee, for their good-faith efforts to follow a voter mandate, is utterly inexcusable. Such a spectacle - and the fact that the District is under congressional attack for undertaking virtually the same steps as its counterparts in Colorado, Washington and, most recently, Alaska - should bring home to the rest of the country the need to redress the historic injustice of the city's limited political powers.

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Child Lives in Maine With Mom Because She's Too Young to Use Drug Legally in Connecticut to Treat Her Epileptic Seizures

At the family's request, Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, introduced a bill in the current session to lift the age restriction on medical marijuana. It is pending in the Public Health Committee.

In the year and a half since she's been taking marijuana oil, Cyndimae Meehan has gone from having hundreds of epileptic seizures a day to just one or two.

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When Connecticut passed its medical marijuana program in 2012, Meehan said she was "ecstatic" until she saw the 18-year-old age limitation, which left her "devastated ... crushed."

Cyndimae Meehan, 12 years old, was suffering as many as 2,000 seizures a day from a severe form of epilepsy known as Dravet's syndrome.

The condition, which she developed at 10 months old (one day after she had been vaccinated, though the connection is unknown) jerks her body violently, over and over. The only thing that has helped has been marijuana, which she consumes in oil form.

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Marijuana is now legal in several states out west, and the world has yet to end. That's part of why two Connecticut lawmakers, Reps. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, and Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, want to bring legalization east.

Is that a good idea? What will happen if we fully legalize marijuana?

Conventional wisdom on that breaks down into two camps: One side says that crime will go up, use will go up, and that all of this will pose a serious public health risk. The other says that legalization will save the government money, help keep people out of jail, and otherwise not make life too different.

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Marijuana is now legal in several states out west, and the world has yet to end. Legalization brings revenue. Marijuana is now legal in several states out west, and the world has yet to end. That's part of why two Connecticut lawmakers, Reps. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, and Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, want to bring legalization east.

Is that a good idea? What will happen if we fully legalize marijuana?

Conventional wisdom on that breaks down into two camps: One side says that crime will go up, use will go up, and that all of this will pose a serious public health risk. The other says that legalization will save the government money, help keep people out of jail, and otherwise not make life too different.

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Cyndimae Meehan, 12 years old, was suffering as many as 2,000 seizures a day from a severe form of epilepsy known as Dravet's syndrome.

The condition, which she developed at 10 months old (one day after she had been vaccinated, though the connection is unknown) jerks her body violently, over and over. The only thing that has helped has been marijuana, which she consumes in oil form.

The youngest of four children, Cyndimae and her mother, Susan Meehan, moved to Maine to take advantage of that state's medical marijuana program, which, unlike Connecticut's, allows patients under 18 to use cannabis.

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Stonington - Board of Education member Craig Esposito has criticized the use of police dogs to search the high school for illegal drugs in December, saying it sent a "bad message" to students.

"It's like you're the warden and the school is a prison," he told Principal Mark Friese during Thursday night's Board of Education meeting.

"You as an adult would not want to be treated that way. To me, it's overkill," he said.

His comments came after Friese offered an overview of the Dec. 12 sweep, in which eight police dogs from area departments searched school hallways, locker rooms and parking lots for illegal drugs while students remained in their classrooms. Two students were cited for possession of marijuana.

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New Haven lawmaker Juan Candelaria and one of his colleagues are seeking to legalize and tax the sale of recreational marijuana in Connecticut. They want it to be seen as a revenue generator and boon to the state's economy.

Candelaria and Rep. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, have proposed bills to legalize marijuana this session. The state has made significant changes to its marijuana laws in recent years, establishing a medical marijuana program in 2012 and decriminalized small amounts of the substance in 2011.

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Tourette's disorder, which is actually a group of related syndromes, does not have a treatment that helps all patients, and medical marijuana would be a hopeful addition to the arsenal, according to a specialist at the Yale Child Study Center.

Tourette's was turned down unanimously by the Department of Consumer Protection's four-member Board of Physicians at this week's meeting, however, largely because of a lack of studies, according to Consumer Protection Commissioner Jonathan A. Harris.

Three new medical conditions may be added to the list of those treatable with medical marijuana: sickle cell disease, post-laminectomy syndrome with chronic radiculopathy (a specific type of back pain) and severe psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.

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Justice Department is attempting to solve a problem that almost no one knew about with a solution that almost no one asked for. The results -- so far, confusion and uncertainty -- have been entirely predictable.

The department announced this month that it would permit marijuana legalization on 300 or so Indian reservations in 30 states. The decision has perplexed American Indian leaders, who say that the last thing many tribes want is more lax federal law enforcement.

Whatever one may think of legalizing marijuana -- and there are plenty of causes for concern, especially regarding its health effects - -- the way to do it is not to let Attorney General Eric Holder simply pick and choose which federal drug laws he will enforce. Yes, prosecutors have discretion, and it may make sense to use it when a state's voters decide to legalize pot. It makes less sense when local officials not only haven't asked, but also rely on the federal government for law enforcement, as is the case with Indian reservations.

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HARTFORD - New guidance from the federal Justice Department has the Mohegan tribe weighing the possible economic benefits of legalizing recreational marijuana on its reservation land.

In a memo, the Justice Department signaled it was not interested in enforcing marijuana laws on nationally-recognized tribal lands, so long as tribes adhered to rules outlined by the feds.

The rules are aimed at preventing the sale of the drug to minors, preventing people from driving while high, and preventing criminals from benefiting from marijuana sales. They mirror guidelines the feds offered last year on state medical marijuana laws.

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Mohegan- Don't look for marijuana sprouts to start popping up on the Mohegan reservation any time soon.

While the tribe that owns Mohegan Sun acknowledged Thursday that it is reviewing a U.S. Department of Justice announcement regarding the legal cultivation and sale of marijuana on tribal lands, it has yet to determine whether such an endeavor would be a good investment.

"We are not actively pursuing this," Chuck Bunnell, the tribe's chief of staff, said Friday. "We're absolutely not at the point where we are classifying our interest in any particular aspect of the business. There is a great deal of due diligence required."

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If we are the parents or guardians of infants, toddlers, young children, we may be telling ourselves that we have nothing to be concerned about regarding the current marijuana controversies.

By the time our kids are tweens and teens, our story goes, issues related to marijuana (decriminalization, medicalization, and legalization) will be settled once and for all, and settled with the health and safety of our kids in mind.

If, instead, our kids are tweens or teens today, when our young people tell us that pot is very easy to acquire or that "everybody smokes weed," we're definitely relieved that "it's just marijuana" and not some more formidable drug they can easily get. And if we'd ever used marijuana ourselves we may think, "What's the big deal? I smoked pot and I turned out OK."

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I'm a medical marijuana patient registered under the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection guidlines. I'm writing in hopes of conveying my concerns regarding Connecticut's current regulations. I'm also curious if there's national interest in our battle with these ridiculous regulations? A brief review by anyone who knows the languages used in these regulations will reveal a complete disregard for patients' rights.

In Connecticut, there's a current petition reguesting that product not be offered in its "homogenized" form. While I do agree with this, I feel the issues only begin there. Under current regulations, patient-to-patient care or trade is illegal, this is in direct conflict with just about every other compassionate model I have reviewed, and possibly the palliative care act. There's no compassionate care system for less fortunate people, and at the current rate of $95 for five grams, I'm sure you can identify the host of issues here. My final and primary concern lies in patient and co-op grows. Patients have fought for these rights, patients are the consumers until legalization, patients won't get registered if product is not only less expensive on the street and if the state doesn't support them. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure that a consumer of marijuana will grow better medicine than counters of money.

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WILLINGTON - Nicole Steinhilber recently graduated from the University of Hartford with a degree in chemistry and didn't have to look far to find a job.

Steinhilber is working as a lab technician in a converted former mill building here testing three strains of medical marijuana that went on sale last week at six state dispensaries.

The first medical marijuana samples will likely arrive soon-once a high-level security system is installed.

The lab, known as "theCRO," which stands for Cannabis Research Organization, is a division of Releaf Therapeutics and will perform testing on medical marijuana to ensure patients' safety and provide them with the best quality products, CEO James Bento said.

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Marijuana activists in Connecticut are asking the Department of Consumer Protection to offer whole cannabis buds in the state's medical marijuana program, rather than groundup plants.

Peter Mould of North Haven is executive director of Connecticut NORML, which advocates for reform of marijuana laws. He and others claim that homogenizing the plant, which the state requires, results in "the degradation of the cannabinoids, the actual essential oils that are in the flower," Mould said.

Mould has posted a petition at change.org (search for "medical marijuana CT"), which states: "We request that you please change your regulations to allow producers to sell the bud-form to dispensaries, in order to enable patients to have their high-quality medicine."

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Marijuana activists in Connecticut are asking the Department of Consumer Protection to offer whole cannabis buds in the state's medical marijuana program, rather than ground-up plants.

Peter Mould of North Haven is executive director of Connecticut NORML, which advocates for reform of marijuana laws. He and others claim that homogenizing the plant, which the state requires, results in the degradation of the cannabinoids, the actual essential oils that are in the flower, Mould said.

Mould has posted a petition at change.org, which states:

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Medical marijuana is just starting to grow throughout Connecticut. Recently four producers were accepted out of the 16 applicants to open up plants to grow medical marijuana. There originally was supposed to be only three producers; however the number of patients increased from 900 to 1,700 during a short period.

The increase in the number of patients required another producer to be chosen from the applications. This amount of increase is only the start of the amount of patients there will be in the years to come, which means more and more producers will need to open up.

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Is it worth the risk to lose a precious child to the use of marijuana? This question is raised by the Sept. 2 story, "Will traffic deaths rise as states legalize pot?"

I applaud The Day for keeping the pot issue going, as it has by quoting several other reliable experts, since Judy Benson's front-page report, "Group urges wariness amid marijuana push: 'We need to stop this train'," (June 18).

This may hopefully make Day's readers aware of the increasing pot dangers, especially as evil "Big Marijuana" interests may start lobbying the state, even before the gubernatorial elections in November.

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