Just when the country is realizing the futility of criminalizing marijuana, it is lapsing back into incoherence with campaigns, nationally and in Connecticut, to outlaw flavored "vaping" products.
Do people really think that smoking marijuana and chronic intoxication are better than inhaling flavored vapors? Science suggests that "vaping," risky as it may be, is less harmful than smoking tobacco and can help escape tobacco addiction.
Drug criminalization has done more damage than drugs themselves -- creating violent crime in a contraband trade, luring the undereducated into dangerous business, and burdening people with criminal records. Only drugs that can cause immediate death are worth criminalizing.
Tobacco smoking is being defeated without criminal law by publicity and taxes. Outlawing flavored "vaping" products promises only to create another contraband industry even as most people already know "vaping" can be harmful.
Indeed, if Connecticut wasn't full of convictions for drug possession and dealing, there wouldn't be clamor for the records-erasing, history-rewriting "clean slate" legislation that Gov. Ned Lamont has just endorsed in principle. The legislation would erase all sorts of convictions -- not just drug-related ones -- for people who go on to stay out of trouble for five years or so.
Erasing convictions for conduct that is decriminalized would not be so objectionable, since criminal law is sometimes unjust and unnecessary. Homosexual acts and adultery once were criminal offenses in Connecticut and now are considered none of government's business.
But blanket erasure of convictions for acts that remain criminal would diminish the deterrence of criminal law and the public's ability to protect itself with job applicants, tenants, contractors, and romantic partners. Blanket erasure also would diminish the advantage to offenders to stop offending, giving them not only second chances to achieve decent lives but also second chances to offend, their first offenses being concealed.
Besides, much of the burden borne by former offenders is not their criminal records at all but their lack of job skills when their sentences are discharged. Most people will give second chances to former offenders who can show that they want to go straight and that they have the skills to do so.
Crumbling from its loss of self-respect, the European Union has just established its own form of "clean slate" policy, a "right to be forgotten," requiring news organizations to suppress records of crimes and other disgraceful acts upon the request of the people involved. This doesn't make that misconduct any less disgraceful. Rather it minimizes disgrace, diminishing society's standards.
With its "right to be forgotten" Europe eventually may be asking, "Adolf who?" With "clean slate" legislation Connecticut eventually may be asking, "Fotis who?"
{Fotis Dulos, of New Canaan, has been charged with the murder of his missing wife, Jennifer Farber Dulos.}
Repealing statutes of limitations relieves accusers of their duty to come forward while evidence is fresh and available and justice more possible. Repeal also is grossly prejudicial to the accused, who will be tainted forever even if innocent. But these days discarding the ancient standards of justice is politically correct.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
