State grapples with cannabis legalization

“Papaya Punch” is a popular item at The Pass in Sheffield, Mass.
Photo by Hunter O. Lyle
The first in a series on the legalization of cannabis in Connecticut.
LAKEVILLE — Change is coming to Connecticut with the legalization of a recreational drug that was once part of an underground culture, and it’s a momentous step for a state that as recently as 10 years ago continued to honor its Puritan heritage by barring liquor stores from opening on Sundays.
A little more than a year ago, Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill allowing for the sale and possession of recreational marijuana, known in the trade as “adult-use cannabis.” Nine years earlier, then-Gov. Dannel Malloy had signed a bill allowing for the sale of marijuana prescribed by a physician for medical purposes.
Marijuana as medicine has been less controversial than recreational, as evidenced by the fact that only a handful of mostly conservative states such as Mississippi and Idaho continue to prohibit it. Still, the legalization of adult-use cannabis in progressive Connecticut did not happen overnight. Possession of small amounts was decriminalized in 2011 and an initial effort to legalize it died in 2018.
Unless it’s carefully planned in advance, the legalization of adult-use cannabis typically prompts a mad rush among the states as officials scramble to figure out how to regulate the cultivation and sale of a substance that, on the federal level, remains a Schedule 1 narcotic on a par with heroin, LSD and mescaline.
Until recently, almost all the states that legalized adult-use cannabis had done so through ballot initiatives. That’s mostly because elected officials were hesitant to leave their fingerprints on legalization, lest something go terribly wrong. So they were willing to let the people decide.
Except for legislatively referred constitutional amendments, Connecticut has no such mechanism for putting issues before voters in the form of a referendum, so it was up to the General Assembly to pass legislation, which it did last year. Some key Democrats withheld support for the measure unless it included provisions for “social equity.” More on that later.
For guidance and, in an effort to avoid mistakes already made elsewhere, Connecticut looked to other states that had already legalized the substance. As cannabis aficionados in the Nutmeg State are aware, the cultivation, sale and use of recreational cannabis-related products was legalized in neighboring Massachusetts through a 2016 ballot initiative. The measure passed by almost 7.5 percentage points statewide and by roughly 30 points in neighboring towns to our north such as Great Barrington and Egremont. Implementation of the new law was left to the hastily created state Cannabis Control Commission (CCC).
In Connecticut, officials opted against creating a stand-alone commission to regulate the industry. Instead, the state Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) was charged with regulating and licensing cannabis businesses. The DCP says it expects retail sales of adult-use cannabis to begin in Connecticut in late 2022 or early 2023.
For its part, the Bay State was able to learn from Colorado, which had legalized adult-use in 2012. What officials have found in both Massachusetts and Connecticut is that the barrier to entry into the business nationwide is quite high. Because cannabis remains illegal on the federal level, most banks will not loan money to cannabis entrepreneurs for fear of losing their federal charters. One Boston-area cannabis investor told the Boston Globe it takes at least $1 million to get started in the retail cannabis sector.
As a result, officials in Massachusetts were concerned that those who had been disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition — mostly people in communities of color — would be among the least likely to obtain commercial financing.
The CCC subsequently created the Social Equity Program, the goal of which is to “ensure that people from communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana law enforcement are included in the new legal marijuana industry.”
In Connecticut, officials have created the Social Equity Council, which says on its website that it was “developed in order to make sure the adult-use cannabis program is grown equitably, and ensures that funds from the adult-use cannabis program are brought back to the communities hit hardest by the war on drugs.”
Last month the DCP allowed 16 cannabis cultivators to move forward with applications that had been previously approved by the Social Equity Council. The licensing fee is a whopping $3 million but those funds will be allocated into the state’s social equity fund to help social equity applicants.
The state has identified more than 200 census tracts that qualify as “disproportionately impacted areas,” including 12 in Litchfield County (11 in Torrington and one in Morris) but none yet in the far Northwest Corner towns of the Region One School District, according to the DCP website.
There is also the matter of cannabis cultivation needed to supply demand from retail outlets and consumers. Connecticut took a cue from Massachusetts, as officials here amended state statutes defining agriculture.
In what is surely the first of more to come, one social equity applicant, Hartford Cannabis Company, last week filed a lawsuit against the DCP, claiming it had been “wrongfully denied a provisional cultivator’s license” earlier this month.
“The terms ‘agriculture’ and ‘farming’ do not include the cultivation of cannabis,” the state Department of Agriculture announced not long after the General Assembly voted to legalize adult use.
This means that so-called “right-to-farm” communities may regulate cannabis production, and neighbors who have the standing may engage in litigation to stop it. Since the mid 1980s, at least a dozen towns, mostly in the rural eastern portion of Connecticut, have passed right-to-farm ordinances that broadly protect those who engage in agricultural activities from certain nuisance lawsuits and regulations regarding odors, noises and other nuisances associated with traditional farming. Cannabis cultivators do not enjoy those protections.
Next week: What are towns in the Northwest Corner doing to prepare for the retail and cultivation of adult-use cannabis?
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.