 Well, hello, this is Guy Page, publisher of Amont State House Headliners, back for our third show. Welcome back. Today, I thought I'd take a special look at what the House Judiciary Committee is doing regarding drug reform laws. And by drugs, I mean illegal drugs, narcotics, sales of illegal drugs. There is a definite trend of bills that are introduced by Judiciary Committee members into the House Judiciary Committee that seem to have a lot in common. And we will go over those in detail today. The highlight here is there are bills that would expunge criminal records for marijuana and hashish possession, decriminalize possession for up to two ounces of marijuana, limit judicial forfeiture of assets. So like when a drug dealer is convicted of something, he can lose his car and his house and his ill-gotten gains. This would limit that. Another bill would reduce hard drug possession from felony to a misdemeanor. And yet another bill would legalize safe spots for drug use. Now understand, I'm not necessarily saying that these are good or bad, but these are all new bills that have been introduced recently into the Vermont House that I think people are interested in. So I'm telling you about it. If you want to receive Vermont State House Headliners directly, our column that comes out almost every day now, you can email Page Communications for VT at gmail.com. That's Page Communications for the number 4, VT at gmail.com. So back to our drug reform bills. Several bills introduced by members of House Judiciary Committee seek to push back the current legal boundaries on marijuana and heavier drugs. For example, H-251, and you can get a good look at exactly what H-251 says by going to the Vermont Legislature's website, that's www.legislature.vermont.gov, H-251 would expunge misdemeanor marijuana possession convictions imposed prior to legalization last year. We all know that possession of marijuana in a small amount, one ounce or less, became legal July 1 of last year. What this bill would do is if you were convicted of a marijuana possession before then, this would expunge that record. It just wouldn't show up anymore, it would be eliminated. It also would decriminalize possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana or 10 grams of hashish. So that's twice as much marijuana as was legalized last year in the legalization bill, twice as much would be decriminalized. It's not exactly legalization. Decriminalization is like getting a parking ticket or speeding ticket. It's a civil fine. So it doesn't go on your criminal record, but on the other hand it's not a completely legal activity either. So this would be decriminalized possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana or 10 grams of hashish. The sponsors for this bill, H-251, are Maxine Grad, chairman of House Judiciary, Celine Colburn, and Barbara Rachelson of House Judiciary, two Burlington members, and also Sam Young of Glover, who is the lead sponsor for the house's tax and regulate retail sale of marijuana bill. So as I said, right now it's legal to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana. This would double that, at least to make it a decriminalized amount. Two ounces of marijuana is enough marijuana, I am told, for about 120 joints. Depends on the strength of the marijuana, of course. But figure about 120 joints for 2 ounces of marijuana. Now, one of the arguments for legalizing possession of marijuana is that, well, they're already selling it. Why not just completely legalize it? And that way maybe it'll help get rid of the black market. What seems to have happened after, since the bill was passed and went into effect of July 1 of last year, is that in our larger towns and cities, anyway, the black market seems to have picked up. I've heard this at various forums. And for example, there is the owner of the Good Times Gallery. That's right across Church Street from City Hall. Literally in the shadow of Burlington City Hall. The owner was arrested for the sale of marijuana on a federal charge. And I've read in seven days that the sales involved edibles, which is a highly concentrated forum, can be a highly concentrated forum of marijuana. And there are teenagers there as well. So apparently to some degree what's happening is that the legal pot, grown legally or possessed legally, is emboldening the sale. The illegal sale of marijuana, which has TJ Donovan, our attorney general. And others saying, well, I guess we might as well just go for full tax and regulate, retail sale, open up the stores and cultivate in Vermont. Might as well do that because obviously something's not working. Again, that's being done in Colorado and other states. And there in those states, the black market is thriving. The idea that you can legalize your way out of the black market just doesn't seem to work in the real world. So another bill, H-250, that is a tax and regulate marijuana bill is in house judiciary. And that's exactly like the bill that is running its way through the Senate right now. And in fact, I think today, as we speak, is February 19th. And I believe it was approved in the Senate today. And the only difference between the Senate tax and regulate bill and the House tax and regulate bill is that the Senate bill doesn't collect as much taxes. Collects about 10%. The House bill would collect about 20%. And why this is important is that Governor Scott has said that, look, if we're going to have a tax and regulate marijuana, retail scheme the way Colorado and other places do, we need to get the money from this to set up the whole regulatory infrastructure, which will cost millions of dollars to get a state lab going and to have education and prevention for our youth and more public safety on the highways, all of which costs a ton of money. In fact, the state tax commissioner estimated it will take at least a 26% tax on marijuana to raise this money. Just to pay for these expenses, no one anymore is talking about, we're going to help pave the roads and teach our kids with marijuana money. Because the only question is, will they be able to raise enough money with legal retail tax and regulate just to cover the costs of legalization? And the Senate bill says 10%, the House bill says 20%. But the administration and their tax people said we need at least 26%. So already, the two bills that are in play right now would apparently not cover the costs of tax and regulate marijuana, the education, prevention, public safety, and regulatory costs. So, moving on to some other bills out of the marijuana realm and into the realm of harder drugs. There is a bill, H102, which would legalize so called safe drug consumption programs. That would be like safe spaces to shoot up, needle exchanges. This would not only legalize these but would limit criminal liability or civil forfeiture for the users, for the staff, and for the organizers of these programs. Would protect them from the government coming in saying, well, that's a legal activity and we're going to arrest you and seize your assets. This would be so that drug users would have a safe space to come and shoot up, get new needles. Presumably not reusing the same dirty ones. Get advice on treatment, receive assistance in case of an overdose. The idea is that they're going to do this anyway and so want to do it in as safe a way as possible and leave open possibilities for treatment and for getting off the drugs. That's the benefit of it. The critics of it say that it really just in a way sort of legalizes and enables the practice as well, that it shouldn't be, should not be making it easier. I'm not expressing an opinion one way or the other, but I'm just saying that this bill would definitely legalize that, set it up, make it doable. Also, this one, this one's interesting, folks. Each 151 would limit the forfeiture of assets of accused criminals. Organized crime criminals, including drug dealers, by eliminating judicial forfeiture in the case of plea bargains. So judges could only seize the property of a convicted person, if the alleged perpetrator not always but often a drug dealer is convicted of the underlying offense. But if the accused criminal cops to a lesser plea, there could be no forfeiture. So you have a situation where you have someone who's arrested for being a drug dealer and he's got maybe a nice home, he's got a nice boat, he's got a car, his ill-gotten gains as it were. And the prosecutor has got a good case against him, but they know that, boy, if they just plead to a somewhat reduced charge, they know he's going to plead guilty. And they won't have to go through the time and expense and the possibility that maybe the jury sides with them. It's an easier thing to do, let's just plea this out. Well, if you plead out, no forfeiture of assets. This law says, can't do that. So makes the police and the judges work harder and, in a way, kind of protects the assets of the convicted drug criminal. The other thing about this is a lot of people know that what happens to these assets once they're seized? Well, a lot of the benefits of that, the proceeds go to law enforcement. They go back to our police and our prosecutors and our law enforcement system that is doing their best to limit and stop drug crime. And they take these proceeds and sometimes they actually use the vehicles themselves, sometimes they sell them and taxpayer burden is greatly relieved. Because the drug dealer no longer has his ill-gotten gains, his or her ill-gotten gains. And instead, that's been converted to the benefit of law enforcement of keeping people safe. Well, this law, this bill, H-151 would say, no more of that. The police don't get these assets anymore. In fact, the assets would go, they go to us. They go to the General Fund, the State of Vermont General Fund, which is overseen by the Vermont legislature. So a lot of the bills and aimed at reducing drug crimes, they say, look, we're just trying to help these poor addicts who are caught in this. And we're trying to help them not just send them away to jail, but help them get treatment. Maybe have them approach police and the authorities without a threat of being arrested quite so much and actually looking for help. This bill would really seem more to be aimed at just no other way I can really see this, except that a drug dealer could plea to a lesser charge and not have his car, boat, house seized. It seems to benefit the bigger fish. So I'd like to know more about that, and I think maybe Vermonters would too. So another bill, H-103, would restructure drug possession laws to make possession of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and other illegal drugs a misdemeanor and possession with intent to sell as a felony. So right now, possession of these hard drugs is a felony. This bill would say, nope, not a felony, because as I mentioned before, there's a real feeling that if you remove the barrier of the felony that the drug user is more likely to seek help from the system, from police, from whomever, rather than hiding and suffering in the shadows. And I guess, I don't know. It'd be interesting to see how that does play out. There's another angle here, though, is that the backers of turning these felonies into misdemeanors also for several years have been promoting the idea of not just misdemeanors, but decriminalization of possession of all hard drugs. A couple years ago, the same supporters who were backing H-103 in a house judiciary meeting a couple weeks ago, a couple years ago, they were in house judiciary talking about how great it is that Portugal, for example, has completely decriminalized its hard drug laws. So there's a lot of concern whenever you're talking about drug reform of the slippery slope. We saw it with marijuana. It went from being a crime to medical marijuana, to decriminalization, to simple possession. And now this year, possibly to selling it on in stores. And there are people who do wonder if the same thing may be happening with hard drugs. That moving from a felony to a misdemeanor in this bill and perhaps eventually to decriminalization and who knows maybe complete legalization. There's another bill along those lines. H-182 would transition our correction system to mental health rehab clinics, which in a way sort of makes sense that if you are going to completely legalize or decriminalize drug use and if a lot of our criminals are in having to do the drug trade, either possession or sales or whatever. If that's why they're in jail, then if you're going to stop looking at this as a crime and more as an addiction that needs to be treated, it's a mental health problem that they need help with, then it does sort of make sense to transition your correction system to a mental health facility. Of course, there are many other crimes and I think known as saying that you're going to just completely get rid of jails and open mental health clinics, but I think they're moving in that trend and that may be one reason why is that the whole emphasis on treating drugs as a crime may be changing and therefore your correction system needs to change too. And there's a sort of an ironic ending to this, I think. I was in the state house this morning and a senator was walking down the stairs and she knew that I'd been very active in stopping smoking in the workplace, for example, years ago, smoking in the workplace loss and she looks at me and says, hey, we're working together again. I said, really, what are you talking about? She said, well, we're working on getting the smoking age, tobacco, smoking age raised from 18 to 21, which I'm not saying right or wrong on that, but I do know the rationale that they give is that brains of 18 to 21 year olds are still developing, that judgment is still in process and a lot of young people start smoking, tobacco between the age of 18 and 21. Therefore, let's just make the sale of it illegal because maybe they'll smoke it less. But the same thinking does not seem to apply quite as well with marijuana and other drugs and in one case they're making the law tougher because they want to discourage it with tobacco, but that doesn't quite seem to be playing out with the marijuana and maybe even other drugs as well. So that's the latest I have for you. These are some of the bills that are in the Judiciary Committee. Doesn't mean that they're all going to get passed. Doesn't really mean that any of them will be passed into law. That's what the committee hearings are for. That's what the votes on the floor of the house and the senator for and then the governor finally has to decide whether he wants to veto something or sign it or just let it pass into law. There's a lot that has to happen between now and then. But it all starts with a bill being introduced and certainly the tenor of the bills that have been introduced about drug use are going towards making it less of a crime, making it more legal. And we'll see where it goes. This is Guy Page from Statehouse Headliners. Thank you for listening. Thank you.