CT Senator Claims Cali Kids Openly Smoking Marijuana In Class

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Photo: Jesse Pearson
Dude! I knew it!

​Connecticut state Senator Toni Boucher doesn’t like medical marijuana, and she seems proud of herself for trying to stop it in her state, according to a press release her office sent out on Thursday.

According to the breathless (and almost entirely brainless) release, Sen. Boucher “valiantly tried to stop a medical marijuana bill from getting out of the Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee.” See there? Trying to stop seriously ill patients from getting the only medicine that helps is “valiant” now, get it?

Toni tried to stop and/or sabotage Connecticut’s medical marijuana bill any way she could, including by slapping a tax on medicinal cannabis.

Photo: CT4th Hotsheet
Connecticut State Senator Toni Boucher: Clueless asswig or lying douchebag? My money’s on both.

​”Senator Boucher offered a number of amendments including one that would expand a current state law that taxes marijuana seized by local authorities during drug busts,” her office trumpets. “The amendment included medical marijuana grown by those granted the right to do so by the state.”
But Toni’s little plan to treat medical marijuana the same as black market pot was voted down, 19 in favor, 21 against. Predictably, she was fuming.
“You can tax over the counter pain medication, cigarettes, alcohol and gas in our new state budget signed by Governor Daniel Malloy yet we fail to pass a tax on medical marijuana?” Boucher sputtered. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“We are in a financial crisis and are raising taxes at an historic level on everything from income, sales, real estate, inheritance, yoga to dog grooming, yet when we are being forced to approve a cash crop, legislators don’t have the will to tax it,” Boucher bitched.
Toni’s tax would have levied $5 on each ounce of marijuana and $2 on every cannabis plant. She wanted the revenue from the tax to go toward anti-drug education programs.
SB 1015 would allow people with cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis damage to the spinal cord, epilepsy, cachexia (emaciation often caused by cancer or cardiac diseases), or wasting syndrome to grow up to four plants, each (oddly) having a maximum height of four feet.

Photo: Anthony Buzzeo/The Daily Wilton
“And then I’ll tell them that passing a medical marijuana law means kids get to smoke in class! Yeah, that’s it!”

​Boucher claims those four plants, each limited by law to four feet tall, would produce five pounds of marijuana apiece. Perhaps Toni would care to share her cultivation methods with the rest of us.
She also claims that the one ounce of usable marijuana which would be allowed by the proposed Connecticut medical cannabis law would yield up to 120 joints — so remind me not to put Toni in charge of rolling at my next pot party. (I hate pin joints!)
Boucher isn’t above quoting some bogus “research” which resurrects the tired old claim that “In fact, smoking one cannabis joint is as harmful to a person’s lungs as having up to five cigarettes,” actually claiming that the research was “published on Tuesday” by the British Lung Foundation.
Toni apparently isn’t very attached to the truth, because the study to which she refers was published nine years ago, in 2002, and has been largely discredited by subsequent research.
“We are not showing compassion for the terminally ill,” Senator Boucher claimed, without bothering to check with the terminally ill first. “We are opening up a myriad of problems by passing this bill out of committee.”
The bill requires patients and their caregivers to register with the Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) and authorizes a $25 registration fee and other fees. Registry information is available for law enforcement purposes, but is otherwise confidential and not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
The bill says physicians, patients, and caregivers should not be arrested, prosecuted or punished for certifying, using, or possessing medical marijuana and requires law enforcement agencies to return the pot and other property seized during any investigation.
Boucher pulled out all the stops in her hysteria-mongering attempt to stop medical marijuana in Connecticut, darkly mentioning to fellow committee members that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) “recently announced in a letter to the Governor of Washington STate that it will be prosecuting those who possess, manufacture and traffic controlled substances.”
Toni even mentioned rising marijuana use among teenagers as a supposed reason to not support medical marijuana — even though research shows that rates of teen cannabis use drops in medical marijuana states.
Boucher, after telling fibs throughout her tawdry little press release, apparently got bored with the little fibs and decided to end with a great big lie:
According to officials from the Grossmont Union High School district in California, students have been seen “openly smoking medical marijuana” in class under the protection of California’s medical marijuana laws.
There are no students “openly smoking medical marijuana in class,” in California or elsewhere. And if they did so, it definitely wouldn’t be “under the protection” of “medical marijuana laws,” NONE of which allow such activity.
The fact that Senator Toni Boucher would stupidly repeat such asinine misinformation is a good indicator of how seriously we should take anything coming out of her lying, mean-spirited little Republican mouth.
Editor’s note: If you’d like to read the actual Connecticut medical marijuana bill, rather than Senator Toni Boucher’s insane spewing, you can find the complete text of the bill, as well as analysis, testimony and other documents associated with the bill here.
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