Marijuana Policy Project

MONTPELIER — Fred Chase's "drug of choice" is a martini every evening, a vice that doesn't have law enforcement very concerned.

But Chase has friends — those in the baby boomer generation — whose drug of choice is marijuana. That vice has them worrying that police will "knock down their door," he said.

"I suggest that marijuana be legalized," he told the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday evening. "Tax it, regulate it, control it."

More than 70 Vermont residents, advocates, lawmakers, court officials and police officials packed a Senate hearing on a bill Wednesday that would decriminalize the possession and sale of small amounts of marijuana.

A strong majority of the nearly two dozen who spoke supported the decriminalization of the plant, many of them raising the concern that arrests for small amounts of marijuana burden the legal system and send users through a downward spiral in the corrections system.

Rory Malone, a Montpelier prisoner rights attorney who noted that he was speaking as a citizen, said the "time has come" to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana — a move that could save the Vermont corrections system an estimated $600,000 a year.

He told the committee about a client whose arrest for marijuana possession cost him his job and forced his partner to find ways to support his family solo. The young man spent a month in jail because of the arrest, Malone said, at the cost to the taxpayer of about $800 a week.

"He's not the type of person we should incarcerate, but we do," he said.

Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, the lead sponsor of the marijuana bill, told her fellow senators that it is time to "inject some sanity into our drug laws."

Prohibition against marijuana as a public policy has failed, she said, and burdened the court system and sent people to jail who otherwise do not commit crimes.

She acknowledged there are still questions to be confronted in her bill, such as what the appropriate number of marijuana plants a person could possess and how to handle possession cases by juveniles.

She also wanted to stress what her bill is not.

"This is not a legalization bill in any way," White said. "This would only decriminalize the penalties for possessing or selling small amounts of marijuana.

Much of the attention Wednesday night was on the marijuana decriminalization bill. But the hearing was also scheduled to take testimony on a companion Senate bill that would strengthen the penalties for cocaine and heroin possession.

Few people spoke on that bill, but most who did disagreed with it.

Kim Cheney, a former Vermont attorney general and state's attorney who now practices law in Montpelier, called coupling the two bills together a "political statement that you are not soft on drugs."

"That is not wise social policy," he told the committee.

Cheney does, however, support the marijuana decriminalization effort. He presented the committee with a copy of the newspaper advertisement signed by 50 local attorneys in support of Windsor County prosecutor Robert Sand — who made headlines late last year with his public support for decriminalizing marijuana.

Cheney said it is clear today's drug laws aren't working.

"My view is, if what you are doing doesn't work, don't do it anymore," he said. "Do something else."

But not everyone supported the proposed change in marijuana laws.

Steven Steiner, who founded the group Dads and Mad Moms Against Drug Dealers after his 19-year-old son died from an OxyContin overdose, said marijuana acted as a gateway drug for his son to discover harder intoxicants.

He warned that any attempt to decriminalize marijuana would lead to increased use among youths. He suggested the Senate committee go in the other direction and strengthen the state laws against its possession.

"You have a beautiful quality of life here in Vermont," Steiner said. "Don't ruin it by legalizing marijuana."

Tom Kelly, the state's attorney in Washington County, also argued against decriminalization, saying it sends the message that "marijuana is not so bad." He also dismissed concerns that marijuana possession charges are slowing down the courts.

"In my office we don't devote an inordinate amount of time to marijuana cases," he said. "I don't think there is a state's attorney's office in Vermont that does."

Still, many who spoke Wednesday advocated strong reforms.

Frank Stellato, a Johnson State College student and the president of the school's chapter of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said prohibition sends marijuana users to the black market — putting that at risk by dealing with "organized crime organizations with only profit in mind."

Meanwhile, the threat of jail time causes a rift between marijuana users who are otherwise law-abiding citizens and police, he said.

"People are afraid that the police can knock down their door and search their homes for smoking an herb that is grown in the ground," Stellato said.