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State Rep. Josh Elliott at WNHH FM.
Joshua Elliott can see legal magic mushrooms for sale and ranked-choice ballots materializing in the distance.
The crusading state representative is determined to move Connecticut closer this year to turning those visions into law. Along with “aid in dying.”
Elliott, a third-term Democrat who represents the 88th State House of Representative District in Hamden, plans to introduce legislation and press for hearings to turn those visions into reality in the Capitol session beginning Feb. 7. He has carved a position as a leading advocate at the legislature for the progressive version of individual “freedom” laws, to keep government out of people’s personal pursuits of pleasure or transcendence or connection to others and offering them more choices for who should represent them.
Elliott doesn’t harbor illusions about final passage of those laws this year. He has raised the issues before. Sponsored bills. Pushed for hearings. Each year he sees progress in prompting the discussion and refining the concepts with hopes of eventually getting past the legislative goal line.
Elliott has reason for optimism: Since his 2016 election as a Bernie Sanders campaigner-turned-state legislator, he has played the long game: Thinking big and long. He spent years with colleagues pushing for the legalization of recreational cannabis use. And it eventually happened. He pushed with colleagues for years to make prison phone calls free instead of hiring a private company to charge prisoners and their families a nation-leading $5 for every fifteen minutes on the line. And last year it happened: Connecticut became to first state to make the calls (and texts and emails) free. Other states are now following suit.
In preparation for the session, Elliott appeared on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program Tuesday to outline plans for advancing his long-term goals in 2024. He said on the program that he plans to run for reelection this year and to consider a gubernatorial run in 2026 if Gov. Ned Lamont does not pursue a third term.
Aid-in-Dying
Elliott has been sponsoring bills for years to allow terminally ill people to take their lives (aka “aid in dying”). The bill finally passed the legislature’s Public Health committee; it got stuck in Judiciary.
The version he plans to resubmit this year has been narrowed to cover terminally ill people with prognoses of less than six months to live, with sign-offs from two doctors and a mental health professional, monthly check-ins, and at least a year of state residence.
“Almost no one” would qualify under that restricted version of the law, Elliott said. But passing it would open the door to evaluation and expansion.
And passing even this version requires prevailing over two main schools of opposition. The church-based opposition has been based on a “nobility of suffering” argument, about which Elliott flatly stated, “I disagree. Why are we being forced to make people suffer?”
A second school of opponents has raised concerns about doctors encouraging people to value their lives less and contributing to the overall devaluing of life for those with disabilities.
“I understand and accept that argument,” Elliott said. He responded that the argument still “leaves a lot of people who want this [option] out in the cold,” for instance if they are seeking not to prolong living under unbearable pain for simply a few extra months.
Magic Mushrooms
Elliott plans to continue pushing legislation to have Connecticut follow Oregon’s lead in decriminalizing and eventually legalizing use of psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms).
A bill to decriminalize the drug passed the state House but not the Senate, where it faces tough opposition. “It’s going to take another three years” of reintroducing and debating the issue while researchers come up with more conclusions about, for instance, the effectiveness of psilocybin in treatment depression and PTSD, Elliott acknowledged. He knows that a long trip remains to get there.
A similar path from research to medical-use legalization eventually led to full recreational legislation of cannabis in Connecticut. Elliott said the rollout of legal cannabis has largely worked as he had hoped in terms of the expunging of criminal records, for instance. He agreed with critics who argue that progress has been too slow on the “social equity” portion of the law — making sure people and groups disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs have a chance on making money from selling newly legal weed. He said he knew from the start that limiting the number of sellers and forcing strict rules on “social equity” partner (preventing them for turning around to sell to big national purveyors) would shut too many people out.
Elliott’s preferred alternative: “Let anybody grow and sell as long as there’s a standard” for safety.
“If there’s too much,” he added, let the free market shake it out. “It’s not our job to pick winners and losers.”
He also suggested promoting micro-grower licenses similar to those offered to micro-breweries to enable smaller players to enter the market.
Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV)
Elliott has been among the Democrats advocating for this growing alternative to winer-take-all elections. He’s looking this session to advance a bill to pilot an RCV experiment in presidential primaries and through a voluntary municipal option (like the law allow New Haven to operate publicly-financed mayoral elections).
Under RCV, voters can choose multiple candidates on a ballot based on order of preference. That allows them to choose candidates they prefer most without worrying about helping to elect their least-favored choice. Votes are tabulated by removing the lowest-grossing candidate round by round, redistributing those candidates’ votes to the voters’ next choices until one candidate reaches 50 percent.
Discussion on this year’s version of the bill to create RCV will be impacted by an expected ruling by the Connecticut attorney general’s office about whether the idea would need to be ratified as a constitutional amendment in a voter referendum or whether the legislature could enact the idea on its own.
Elliott noted that some election reform advocates who might otherwise support RCV have raised concerns about its impact on “crossover voting.” For instance: Third parties like the Working Families Party and the the Independent Party cross-endorse major-party candidates. They want to make sure that under RCV those candidates wouldn’t therefore lose votes by having them split between two party lines and counted separately. Elliott argued that a law can be drawn up to address that concern.
Click on the above video to watch the full interview with State Rep. Joshua Elliott on WNHH FM’s“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of Dateline New Haven.
If Rep Elliot wants to kill himself there is no one stopping him. Legalizing suicide is the same as legalizing murder. Thou shalt not kill; even yourself. You can be doped up enough to face your demise in relative comfort, thanks to our technology. Not much suffering is necessary.