State & Local Executive Branches

After more than 10 years of trying, 2011 could be the year that Connecticut adopts legislation allowing severely ill patients to smoke marijuana. Governor Dannel P. Malloy says he's inclined to sign that bill. Malloy also supports decriminalization legislation to reduce penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana to the price of a motor vehicle infraction. Now, with a friendly face in the governor's office, all the legislative proponents of the two measures have to do is push the bills through a variety of committee debates and floor battles in the House and Senate, fend off opposition and get the bills approved before the midnight June 8 deadline.

New Jersey's state senator Scutari said he's taking the next step toward voiding Gov. Chris Christie's proposed strict medical marijuana regulations after the Christie administration missed a Wednesday deadline to submit a new version. A hearing on the issue has been scheduled for Jan. 20 before the state Senate's health committee.

The high price of enforcing criminal penalties on non-violent offenders has Georgia's new Republican governor rethinking a major linchpin in US domestic policy: the drug war. Roughly 19 percent of Georgia's prison population was incarcerated on drug offenses in 2009, according to a report by the Office on National Drug Control Policy. Nationally, nearly half of all arrests are due to laws criminalizing the cultivation, sales and use of cannabis, which has been shown to be less damaging to human health than alcohol or tobacco.

Prop. 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, goes into effect today. This means the state health department has until April 16 to finish its rule-making process, two weeks more than it had expected. The Arizona Department of Health Services will publish the first draft of its rules Friday, kicking off a public-comment period.

New Jersey's Senate may vote Monday to defy Gov. Chris Christie over his proposed strict medical marijuana regulations. The vote is scheduled even though Christie and the state Assembly's prime sponsor of medical marijuana struck a deal on regulations last week.