Why hasn’t marijuana been legalized?

Introducing tolling on Connecticut highways is resigning ourselves to the fate of a state like Delaware: a pass-through road to better states. This is why for me, as a New London resident, it is easier to use public transportation to get to New York City than to Hartford.

It is about more than marijuana. It is about injecting sustainability and self-reliance into our economy. It is about the fact that our state economy perpetually teeters on the edge of one more year of federal subsidies and contracts and the whims of corporations, which have led us into a nuclear tax break race while we beg our corporate partners not to leave us for a less regulated state.

Bottom line is federal legalization of marijuana is not a possibility. It is an eventuality and with the MORE Act, it will be a certainty sooner than later. It is no longer a question of if legalization will come to Connecticut, but how much tax revenue the state will make before being undercut by a federal market and a federal tax.

When legalization becomes federal, Connecticut will lose any initiative it could have had in creating infrastructure and legislation for itself. It just makes fiscal sense.

William Keating

New London