Marijuana

istration intends to craft later in collaboration with legislative committee.

The administration’s draft bill also:

Limits marketing so children are not targeted for cannabis sales;

Increases trained drug recognition experts in state and municipal police departments;

Updates Connecticut’s clean air act to incorporate cannabis and vaping within existing restrictions on secondhand smoke.

Though l a wmakers have discussed marijuana commercialization frequently at the committee level over the past four years, Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, co-chairman of the Public Health Committee, said Tuesday that “I think it has extremely stronger prospects than it had in recent years.”

If the legislation is to pass,

though, Steinberg said his panel and other health advocates must place as large a role in shaping the legislation as will others concerned with fiscal and criminal justice matters.

Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford, co-chair of the Education Committee, has been one of the legislature’s strongest voices for de-criminalization of cannabis, including expunging the records of those convicted previously.

McCrory also said there would be strong opposition to taxing cannabis sales — and giving Connecticut government a new stream of revenue — if those dollars aren’t used to help the state’s poor urban centers, where many of the marijuana-related convictions occurred.

“Frosty the Snowman would have a better chance of passing summer school in hell than any piece of legislation in Connecticut if it doesn’t deal with equity, economics and the

communities that have been targeted and devastated by this fake war on drugs,” McCrory said.

Sen. John Fonfara, another Hartford Democrat, said marijuana commercialization is a “nonstarter” unless it’s a tool to reverse systemic racism.

“It ’s about building wealth in the [disadvantaged] community,” said Fonfara, who co-chairs the tax-writing Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. “If you’re going to tackle racism, it’s based in giving people economic opportunity and economic power. It’s an imperative for me.”

But the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford, said it’s a mistake to assume marijuana commercialization will pass this year.

Candelora, a longtime opponent of cannabis legalization, said many lawmakers initially are drawn by the lure of more revenue for the

state, but then pause when they study the details more closely.

Lamont’s proposal doesn’t offer any revenue estimate. And when the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis last projected receipts from taxing marijuana, in 2017, it’s annual revenue estimate of $115 million was based on models from other states.

Pro-commercialization advocates have suggested Connecticut’s annual take couldbe$170millionormore.

“There are other ways for governmenttomakemoney,” Candelora said, adding that the debate can’t ignore the potentialimpactonConnecticut’s children. “The science is really against it, when you look at the impact on youth, ondevelopingbrains, ondrug addiction.”