Under legislation proposed by state Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, Connecticut would legalize and tax marijuana. Of course, marijuana is barely illegal in the state now, possession of a half ounce or less having been reduced in 2011 to a mere infraction liable to a small fine, while charges of possessing larger amounts are eligible for resolution through probation. Indeed, marijuana use in Connecticut has become so common that police, prosecutors, and courts really don’t want to bother with it anymore, though sale and cultivation of the drug remain felonies, at least technically.

Looney, a Democrat from New Haven, is a big-government liberal and his main objective with the marijuana bill seems to be taxation. He advocates the marijuana business system recently adopted in Colorado, which is raising more than $100 million per year for state and local government there. That kind of money could finance golden parachutes for a few more failed football coaches at the University of Connecticut.

But legal marijuana is giving Colorado more than tax money. It is also producing a huge increase in students coming to school stoned, since, as with liquor and cigarettes, limiting sales to adults doesn’t keep young adults from procuring stuff for those under 18.

With legal marijuana Colorado also has built a state-sanctioned and closely regulated industry on the violation of federal drug law, which still classifies marijuana with the most powerful of the illegal drugs. While President Obama, violating his constitutional obligation to execute the law faithfully, has told his Justice Department to suspend marijuana law enforcement in states that don’t want it, a different president could take his obligations more seriously.

Nothing obliges Connecticut to criminalize any drugs; the state is free to decriminalize marijuana and anything else and leave the issue to the federal government, which maybe someday will wise up and simply medicalize the whole drug problem, the “war on drugs” long having been only a fantastically costly employment program for police, prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, prison guards, parole and probation officers, and social workers.

But basing a retail industry and tax system on the violation of federal law goes far beyond mere decriminalization and becomes nullification. That's the sort of thing New Haven has been doing for years by issuing identification cards to illegal aliens to facilitate their violation of federal immigration law, “state’s rights” stuff that impairs national unity, stuff liberals used to deplore when conservatives did it to thwart the Constitution and federal civil rights laws.

In coming months states governed by conservatives may note the success of liberal nullification in Colorado, Connecticut, and elsewhere, and implore the new president, who is suspected of having conservative if not reactionary instincts, to be like Obama and decline to enforce the federal laws and court decisions he doesn’t like, starting with abortion rights.

The next step will be secession, though in light of how much liberals and conservatives have come to hate each other lately, maybe this time the country will agree to divide peacefully.