Hartford — Lindsey Beck, 26, of Voluntown, had a simple question for the legislators on the Judiciary Committee Monday.



“Part of human life is suffering and pain, the payoff being joy and pleasure,” Beck said. “However, is it not our obligation as a species that can show compassion to wish the minimal amount of suffering upon each individual?”



Beck was there with her mother to ask legislators to pass a bill to allow persons with illnesses that could be relieved by the use of marijuana to use the drug without fear of arrest.



The committee was conducting a hearing on a number of bills that would change the way the state treats marijuana use and possession, including two that that would essentially decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce by reducing it from a misdemeanor to an infraction.



Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said he would sign both a medical marijuana bill and a bill reducing the penalty for possession to a simple fine.



The story Beck told the legislators was one of a succession of maladies — Crohn’s disease, “which causes me a great deal of physical pain, has inhibited my ability to eat most everything and has no cure,” cervical cancer and fibromyalgia — and the succession of narcotics that her doctors put her on.



The narcotics — including dilaudid, fentanyl and vicodin — reduced her to a helpless stupor, making her unable to be a mother to her young son or even to function in the most basic of circumstances,” she said.



She realized “that this was not the kind of life worth living,” and decided to get off the drugs. “My withdrawal seemed to continue for more than a month, causing me at some points to truly question my own sanity.”



In the end, the only thing that has truly given her relief, she said, is marijuana.



Beck was one of a long list of witnesses who came to ask the committee to legalize the medical use of marijuana.



While a great deal of the testimony focused on the palliative effects of the drug on persons with certain diseases, there was also a great deal of argument over two bills that would reduce the possession of less than an ounce of the drug to an infraction, subject to a fine.



Among those testifying in favor of this was Michael Lawlor, undersecretary of the Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division of the state Office of Policy and Management.



Under the governor’s proposed version of the bill, the charge for possession of less than an ounce would be subject to a fine of only $99, Lawlor told the committee.



“And there’s a couple advantages to this policy change: First of all, it acknowledges what is the reality in our courts today, which is that virtually everyone who is arrested solely for small amounts of marijuana ends up with a dismissal of the charges,” Lawlor said.



There are over 8,000 arrests every year for possession of marijuana, and a little over 2,000 of those are for possession of less than an ounce, Lawlor said.

