Thumbs up, thumbs down

Thumbs up to the inclusion of social equity provisions in any bill to legalize recreational marijuana. While expectations have been high following neighboring states’ decisions on legalization, some legislators have insisted that the state simultaneously address people who have been most affected by the decadeslong drug war that has devastated communities. This is the right stance. People who have spent years behind bars over a substance that is about to be legalized need to be made whole, to whatever extent is possible. It’s worth opposing legalization until this can be achieved.

Thumbs down to the number of reported hate crimes in Connecticut nearly doubling from 65 to 128 between 2019 and 2020. These are just the crimes that were reported, and experts fear the true figure may be considerably highers. Of those 128 cases, 106 involved white supremacist propaganda, while there were 21 anti-Semitic incidents along with one extremist murder and a white supremacist event. Nationally, the ADL recorded a record number of white supremacist events, averaging them out to 14 a day. While the COVID-19 pandemic can be blamed for sparking the kind of anxiety that can fuel such actions, the larger question is whether it merely triggered troubling latent issues.

Thumbs up to an encouraging turnout from Connecticut’s youngest candidates for

COVID-19 vaccines turning up for their first dose. Since residents aged

16 through 24 became eligible on April

1, nearly a quarter of that population got the shot. For some students in that group, there’s some extra motivation to being able to tentatively plan graduations, proms or other school-related festivities. Gov. Ned Lamont predicted, “I have a feeling we’re going to have to work harder with the younger demographic,” but this is a good start.

Thumbs up to plans to reopen Connecticut courthouses as COVID restrictions are lifted around the state. Precautions enacted at the pandemic’s outset a year ago were unavoidable, but they resulted in an unacceptable backlog of cases that has left people in limbo for far too long. The courts plan to return to “near normal” operations over the next few months, officials said, which will be a relief to everyone involved. While much can be done virtually, the regular functioning of our justice system is something that has been on hold for too long.