A burdened sigh crackles through the phone. “I left because it was really, really bad,” Lidia tells me in Spanish. “It’s still really difficult for me to talk about. I’d rather not. It still upsets me.”

Lidia came to the United States from Guatemala in 2014 with her son. Between dropping off and picking her son up from school, she rushes between appointments cleaning houses. “For the moment, my life is a bit complicated,” she laughs.

Lidia was detained in Texas before moving to New Haven, where she’s currently fighting a legal battle to obtain status as an asylee in the U.S. “The process has been long and complicated, because when you come to this country, you don’t know anyone, you don’t know the place, you don’t know anything,” she said.

On Jan. 4, 2016, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Jeh C. Johnson issued a statement announcing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had undertaken concerted efforts to take into custody and deport undocumented immigrants arrested after May 1, 2014, who had received final court orders to return to their countries. Even in cities like New Haven, where officials refuse to cooperate with ICE, the threat of these raids sent fear and alarm reverberating throughout immigrant populations in the U.S. And for good reason: when ICE raids swept through New Haven in 2007, only five of the 32 individuals detained had final court orders.

“At first, I was very afraid because I hadn’t been here during a time like that,” Lidia told me, describing her reaction when the raids were announced. “I panicked and didn’t want to go out or leave my son at school because I thought, ‘If they deport me alone, I don’t want to be separated from my son.’ But now, a little later, things are much more calm.”

At a protest against the raids on Jan. 6, Mayor Toni Harp, ARC ’78, along with other city officials reassured immigrants that city workers would not cooperate to enforce federal immigration law, and would “act in support of all residents regardless of documentation immigration status.” On a WNHH radio program, Harp discussed why she spoke at the protests, saying: “I wanted to let them know that we are still a sanctuary city.”

***

“Sanctuary city” is a nebulous term applied to U.S. municipalities that have lax immigration policies, or that have policies constructed to protect undocumented immigrants living within them. The principles that guide New Haven’s own stance as a sanctuary city today date back to the early-to-mid 20th century, when millions of African Americans moved north seeking improved prospects in industrialized cities. “New Haven is a city that’s been shaped by many, many people’s struggles and aspirations to come here, to create opportunities for themselves, to protect themselves from persecution, over many generations,” said Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Associate Master of Ezra Stiles College. “So this new arrival of Central Americans and Mexicans and Ecuadorians is part of a much longer history.”

Life in the sanctuary city has not always been easy. White flight and other urban crises during the 1970s hit New Haven hard, sending the city into decline and generating other social and economic inequalities that still linger today. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that, since the Great Depression, New Haven has had the fastest-growing income inequality gap among all U.S. cities.

Yet according to Camacho, these collective challenges have, in part, informed New Haven’s willingness to welcome those fleeing hardship in search of a better life. Residents and policy-makers felt it was urgent to make New Haven a model of governance that promoted inclusion of newcomers rather than exclusion or criminalization; to display a different kind of response to challenges created by globalization.

During John DeStefano’s term as mayor, New Haven reinforced its position as a sanctuary city, implementing new, innovative policies to better protect and serve its population of undocumented immigrants. In 2005, the city created a program called “Hablamos Español” to increase bilingual services such as dual language and immersion schools, as well as Spanish translations of state government documentation and literature. Around the same time, the city enforced policies to prevent police officers from inquiring about immigrant status so that undocumented individuals would be able to report crime without fear of deportation. Perhaps most radically, in 2007, the city piloted the first municipal identification cards ever issued in the U.S.: the Elm City Resident Card, available to all residents, regardless of immigrant status.

These new initiatives have benefited people like Lidia and her son. “There are lots of good people here, people who understand me,” she said. “I’m happy with my son’s school, too they’ve supported me a lot because of his speech problems. They have a lot of patience with him.”

However, on Jun. 6, 2007, just days after the New Haven Board of Aldermen voted in support of the new ID program, ICE stormed the Fair Haven community, arresting 31 suspected undocumented immigrants. Both the raids and ID program called national attention to New Haven’s stance toward immigration, but also revealed to New Haven itself just how unique that stance was. “Before the raids, I can’t say that the community felt it was doing anything,” Destefano said. “We were trying to manage our own affairs. I think that we were aware of the issue of resident cards, available to all residents, legal and undocumented, and we knew we were the first state doing that. But we didn’t feel like, ‘Oh we’re doing that to make a national statement.”

In years following the raids, however, DeStefano began to imagine New Haven’s role as a model for policy-making in other cities across the country. “The raids made us say, well, maybe New Haven does have this role to play. To say to the rest of the nation, you could have these policies and there’s not massive unemployment, we’re not having drugs or gangs emerge from this kind of stuff. We could put an end to a lot of the ignorance around immigration policy.”

***

The protection of a sanctuary city has its limits though. In the face of a threat of deportation like an ICE raid, “there’s only so much New Haven can do,” Claire Simonich, LAW ’16, told me. “If you’re going to be deported, you’re going to be scared no matter how much the New Haven government says it won’t report you to ICE.” Yet even before an ICE raid takes place, challenges associated with the process of asylum-seeking pose a significant threat to Central Americans seeking asylee status in the U.S.

The process of receiving asylum is a complex one, usually beginning with a series of interviews. First, an asylum officer attempts to determine whether or not the asylum seeker has a reasonable fear of returning to his or her country because of oppressive circumstances such as persecution, rape, or discrimination. After this interview, asylum seekers make their case before an immigration judge. “After that, you can ask for a new interview if there was a procedural or legal flaw in your interview,” Simonich said. “For example, if the translator was bad, or if you were too afraid to speak up because you were terrified.”

According to Simonich, the government is making it much harder for Central American women and children to receive asylum than it already is by placing these individuals and families on what’s called an expedited docket. This docket reduces the time between an asylum-seeker’s release from a detention center and the time of his or her hearing. While the process varies from court to court, in some instances, this new procedure can decrease the amount of time that asylum seekers have to prepare a case from years to just a few months.

Even before the expedited docket was set into motion, timing posed a substantial barrier to asylum seekers gaining asylee status. Swapna Reddy, LAW ’16, told me that detention facilities often release families at 11:00 p.m. at a bus station, from which they ride a bus for 24 hours or more to arrive in a city where they can stay. “Eventually, something is supposed to be sent to them in the mail, but that might come one week after they’re released or one year after they’re released,” Reddy says. “So, unsurprisingly, a lot of people never get that piece of paper. They never find out where they’re supposed to go, they fail to show up to court, and they lose their cases as a technicality.”

Trauma, too, poses a barrier to asylum seekers. “It’s really difficult for them to on-command talk to a stranger about what exactly they’ve experienced, when they were raped or what happened when their loved one was murdered,” Reddy said. “That’s why it’s so important for these families to have lawyers, because a lawyer can meet with a client many times on their own until the client is comfortable sharing their story, and then make sure that that story actually gets told to the judge in court.” For families that don’t have lawyers, it’s hard to get that story out the first time. A 2015 study by the American Bar Association demonstrated that children represented by lawyers have a 73% success rate in immigration court, as compared to a 15% success rate for unrepresented children.

“Under the letter of international law, they should get this full asylum hearing, and they should become a green cardholder, essentially, if they have this fear of returning to their country,” Simonich said. “In practice, that’s not happening.”

According to Camacho, the reason the U.S. has made such a resolute effort to deport Central Americans has as much to do with foreign policy as domestic policy. “For the Department of Homeland Security, there’s this sense that in order for immigration policy to be credible, there have to be removals,” she said.

Following a surge in immigration from Central America in 2014, the U.S. sent representatives to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to reiterate the Central American countries’ responsibility in deterring illegal immigration to the U.S. “They essentially said, ‘we will not accept these people, your governments are responsible, you must deter out migration,’” Camacho told me. The U.S. also funded the militarization of Mexico’s southern border to the extent that Mexico’s deportation rates have increased by 71%. Currently, Mexico is deporting more Central Americans than the U.S.

“So the U.S. has to do its part to send that message of total commitment to deterrence,” Camacho said. “They say they’re really only going after the people who have orders of deportation, they’re only going after people who have committed crimes, but in fact they’ve far exceeded the bounds of what their program says and they’re going after a lot of ordinary people who have really deep ties.”

***

On Tuesday, Fed. 23, Camacho was arrested in front of the White House in Washington, DC, for civil disobedience while protesting recent ICE raids. She stood alongside 13 representatives from legal groups, advocacy groups, faith-based groups and political groups—all of whom use unique strategies to address the needs of Central American immigrants and asylum seekers in the U.S. They wore red gloves as they stood in the rain holding a banner reading, “President Obama, you have blood on your hands.”

Camacho told me that what precipitated these protests were reports that 83 of the Central American migrants who had been deported since 2014 had been murdered upon arriving home from the United States. “There’s been allegations that a number of those killed were minors,” Camacho told me. “This created the need to say this whole policy is making the United States complicit in a very dangerous situation that terrorizes these communities.”

As the government has escalated efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, so too have Yale students and faculty extended New Haven’s role as a sanctuary city beyond city lines by advocating for the rights of Central American asylum seekers across the country.

A group of Yale Law School students have recently founded the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) in order to mobilize student talents to meet the needs of vulnerable Central American families that are detained or have been formerly detained. Much of ASAP’s efforts have focused on innovation and in coordinating work efficiently across cases. For instance, the project has restructured the ways in which immigration cases are prepared so that documents can be prepared in parallel by teams of volunteers, instead of in sequence by one lawyer. “We’re able to assemble the case in one tenth of the time because there are 10 people working instead of just one, and are then able to file it within two days of learning about someone’s legal needs,” said Reddy, a co-founder of ASAP.

Much of ASAP’s work directly addresses the barriers that stand between asylum-seekers and receiving protected status. The group is working to secure psychological evaluations for families as evidence of the trauma they’ve experienced that might impede their ability to express their sentiments. “We want to be able to say, ‘Hey, this woman has PTSD, she’s not capable of expressing her fear very well in this interview, so you need to give her a new one,” Simonich said.

The group is also working to reverse deportation orders issued because of procedural issues, rather than a failure to present a convincing case. “When families have received a removal order because they didn’t know to go to court, we’ve been able to help families around the country reopen their cases, to file a document in court, saying, ‘Hey, I was ordered removed because I didn’t even know I had to be there, here were the issues that prevented me from receiving notice, can you give me another shot,” Reddy said.

Already, ASAP has prevented the deportation of 100 families through emergency legal filings; gathered case information for over 5,000 asylum-seeking families; and notified over 750 families of upcoming hearings. The students have provided representation for every family with a full immigration trial in the Dilley family detention center since May 2015, and have won every case.

ASAP’s work and Professor Camacho’s protest are representative of a new immigrant rights movement, one that is looking to generate innovative strategies to serve Central American asylum-seekers whose needs are not always met by the U.S. Justice System. “I think this is a moment where organizers are looking to ask what new strategies do we bring to achieve our ends, because previous strategies haven’t yielded what was hoped for,” Camacho said. “So I think this action was an effort to say we can’t wait, we can’t be patient, we need to act and push on these issues of deportation because it’s so catastrophic.”

New strategies and policies that emerge from this city and its inhabitants will become a part of the continuation of this tradition. “People in New Haven don’t see any difference between me and legal immigrants,” Lidia told me, “And it makes me feel safe and supported in this country.”

The Herald’s not too keen on science (unless we’re talking science guts. That’s a whoooole different story). And even as the Staff’s token STEM major, I get it. Four-hour labs aren’t all that fun. Neither are psets, or biking up science hill in -8º weather. I’m currently shirking my editorial duties for the night to cram for an orgo exam. Fantasies of once-a-week seminars and “too much reading” interrupt dreams typically filled with Claisen-condensation reactions and the GTPase cycle.

Here in New Haven, science is intersecting with urban development in a big way. In this week’s front, Carmen Baskauf, SY’17, discusses the implications of a Yale-founded pharmaceutical company, Alexion, moving back to the Elm City. It’s a fascinating look into the ’Have’s history, and what it means to be a post-post-industrial city.

Look inside for more:

Features

Tune in to WYBCX with Liza Rodler, CC’17, to get an inside look at Yale’s airwaves.

Deleine Lee, BR’19, explores a convent in Westville that will soon get re-inhabited, minus the habits.

Opinion

Chelsea Watson, JE ‘17, and Marissa Medici, ES ‘19, shed some light on a shady Corporation.

Nicola Haubold, SM ‘19, realizes the value of her faith in a secular community.

Culture

Alexandra Zafran, ES ’19,  takes a snapshot of “Humans of New York” founder Brandon Stanton.

Then Phoebe Chatfield, ES ’18, takes us behind the scenes with some radical Brazilian street artists.

Voices

Anna Lipin, ES ’18, meditates on finding quiet in New York City.

Stefanie Fernandez, TD ’17, illustrates dusk in Key West, Florida.

Reviews

Jordan Coley, SY ’17, balances Kanye’s past and Pablo’s present.

Also: Deadpool’s wall-breaking, The Fright’s punky pop, and the Coens’ toast to Hollywood.

 

Okay I actually have to figure out so much orgo! But while I’m doing so, read us!

Bye now,

Rachel

Managing Editor

In high school I spent hours in the art studio, painting, sketching, rolling prints through the press. There was something so gratifying about the concreteness of it all—of creating something I could hold in my own hands. That same satisfaction of shaping something that lasts is something that can be hard to find in our four short years here.

In this week’s front, Patrick Doolittle, SY ’17, profiles Scott Strobel, a man who’s molding both the physical and the intangible here at Yale. He’s an MB&B professor and runs West Campus. In his spare time, he crafts fallen historic trees grown on Yale’s campus into bowls and pens. You should buy a Yale Bowl for your mom.

When you’ve had your fill, head over to Features, where Calvin Harrison, CC ’17, explains a crazy fluke in the Bridgeport mayoral election. Take a peek at Opinion, where Lisa Ann Tang, SM ’17, meditates on CS50 and the role of technology in the classroom. And in Voices, Frances Lindemann, DC ’19, brings on all the feels with an essay about young love.

Amid the madness this time of year, take a step back and a deep breath. Read us over a meal or study break and think about what you can shape.

Hang in there,

Rachel Strodel

Features Editor

On Tuesday, I took my first ride in an Uber taxi to my night class on Science Hill. Within a minute of requesting my ride through Uber’s iPhone app, Jose Perez pulled up to the intersection of Grove and Prospect in his black Toyota Camry.

“Hi, Rachel?” He said through the window. “Do you want to sit up here?” he said, gesturing to the passenger seat. “You can shift the chair back if you like.”

The black leather interior of Perez’s car was clean except for two plastic water bottles in the front seat cup holders. Perez wore a checkered button-down, faded jeans, and a Bluetooth tucked over his ear.

While driving up Prospect Street, Perez told me that he had been working for another cab company (which he preferred not to name) when he heard about Uber and decided to apply for the job. He’s been driving for the company for about three months.

“I’ve never been this happy in my life,” he said.

Uber and a similar ridesharing company called Lyft hit the streets of New Haven this past April. These two companies are among a small handful of web-based services that allow passengers to find drivers with a smartphone app that tracks where the nearest rides are located. Uber and Lyft drivers have the option of using their own personal cars to transport passengers.

These alternative taxi services may be quick, easy, and user-friendly, but many have reservations surrounding the safety of their services. Laurence Grotheer, director of communications for the mayor’s office, said that mayor Toni Harp has “serious concerns” about the arrival of this new generation of taxi services in New Haven. Uber and Lyft aren’t licensed in the same way as traditional cab companies like Metro Taxi, calling into question passenger safety, driver safety, and even insurance requirements for the vehicles used by those drivers.

Uber and Lyft drivers aren’t obligated to serve all areas of the city, either. “Frankly, there’s the potential for discrimination,” Grotheer said.

Transportation deficiencies in New Haven are under scrutiny after DataHaven, a public information non-profit, administered a Well Being survey in 2012 that found that two percent of New Haven households have “no reliable vehicle” available. Consequently, those residents are denied access to about half the jobs in the greater New Haven area. Uber and Lyft may expand the options available and improve quality of cab services, but increasing and improving taxi services may not address transit problems plaguing New Haven residents.

***

Uber and Lyft are revolutionizing the way taxi services operate, Perez said. With his old company, riders could identify their driver only by their car number, but Uber allows passengers to see a photo of their driver, their driver’s name, the make and model of the car, and their driver’s location even before the car arrives.

“With my other company, you would wait and wait and wait,” Perez said. “Ten, 20, 30 minutes later—maybe that car never shows up. But with Uber, you can see your driver and even contact them through a private number.”

Perez said that Uber might actually relieve the pressure placed on cab drivers, thus encouraging safer driving practices. “With my old company, you were so stressed about paying a high lease to the company so they could make their payment,” he said. “With Uber, we pay them a percentage out of whatever we make, so we’re not in that stressed mode. We’re not hurrying to pick up either because we can just call that person if we’ll be late.”

Because Uber and Lyft provide a streamlined system for both drivers and passengers, traditional cab companies fear that web-based ride providers will force them out of business. In an article in the New Haven Register, Bill Scalzi, founder and president of Metro Taxi called those services “the biggest threat [his] industry has ever seen.” Some say that this competition is for the better. James Walker, metro editor for the New Haven Register, turned to Uber for his Saturday night commute after being twice deserted by Metro Taxi. In an op-ed in the Register, he wrote, “Uber and Lyft didn’t form because everyone is happy and satisfied that the transportation in place works for everyone.”

But even Uber and Lyft fall short in bridging New Haven’s transportation gap.

***

According to Mark Abraham, PC ‘04, Datahaven’s Executive Director, growth in suburban areas surrounding New Haven since the 1970s and 80s has exacerbated problems caused by transportation deficiencies. “There are still many jobs located in the city, but there are even more in the suburbs—especially the type of low-wage or entry-level jobs that tend to be more accessible to younger New Haven residents or those with fewer educational credentials,” he said in an interview with the Herald.

Transportation difficulties impact different populations in different ways. Limited access might hinder a New Haven resident looking for a job, Abraham said, but something as simple as “poor pedestrian infrastructure” might also challenge a family with a small child or elderly person simply trying to cross a busy street.

“It depends a lot on your perspective,” Abraham said.

Services such as Uber and Lyft might cater to a population that isn’t as impacted by transportation shortages on a day-to-day basis. In an interview with the Herald, Deanna Song, ES ’16, a Dwight Hall Urban Fellow said, “I’ve seen a lot of students trying [Uber] out, but I’m not sure if it targets the right population since most commuters need constant access to their mode of transportation.”

Uber and Lyft aren’t much cheaper than regular taxi services either, Song said, so it’s unlikely that these companies will reduce costs for low-income residents.

Abraham said census data suggest that only a small fraction of the population uses taxi and rental services on a daily basis, so Uber, Lyft, and Zipcar probably won’t impact commuting to and from work. Because transportation needs are so great, however, they might play a role in “the larger equation,” perhaps providing better access to short trips and occasional errands.

By comparison, improvements in the bus system would have more universal impact, Song said.

“I’m not sure a subway system would be feasible,” she said. “Expanding the areas buses cover and improving the frequency at which they run would be a really great way to start addressing people’s transportation needs.” The time that buses run is especially crucial, she said, since many bus routes already reach far outside New Haven but aren’t active often enough to be of use to many commuters. The most efficient solutions to the transportation gap might be to maximize the reach of existing systems.

***

The city already has several initiatives underway to reevaluate existing infrastructure. Officials are studying traffic patterns to investigate if one-way streets are the most effective use of street space. Curb extensions are being implemented to help narrow roads, calm traffic, and encourage slower speeds. “Smart” parking meters, which can be reloaded remotely through a smartphone app, will encourage meter compliance.

Mayor Harp and city legislators are also currently working on making existing transportation options safer through a “vulnerable users law” meant to protect commuters such as bicyclists and pedestrians as they travel around the city. “The hope is not only to better defend such commuters, but also to encourage environmentally-friendly modes of transport,” Grotheer said.

Officials are also exploring the possibility of expanding mass transit.

“The mayor wants the Board of Alders to consider joining her in applying for a grant to study the feasibility of a light rail system in New Haven.” Grotheer said. In the meantime, however, there are ongoing talks of creating a metro center from which all buses will depart and altering bus routes to run around the periphery of the city rather than passing through downtown.

Uber, Lyft, and other web-based cab alternatives will have to work with local legislation to determine how to appropriately comply with existing transportation policies. But while these new services don’t necessarily meet the needs of New Haven residents struggling with day-to-day commutes, they do represent burgeoning innovations to enlarge and improve the city’s access to the Greater New Haven area. Though the arrival of Uber and Lyft may be anticlimactic in that they serve only a small slice of the city’s population, they prompt a conversation about the need for transportation reform that may indeed lead to solutions that serve the diverse needs of the New Haven community at large.

Bluepoint Wellness is tucked behind Planet Fitness in downtown Branford. At the front door, a secretary’s voice greeted me over the intercom as she buzzed me into a small lobby with hardwood floors that smelled like potpourri. The room’s blue walls, adorned with abstract paintings of still life, struck me as more suited to a beach house than a medical marijuana dispensary. Nick Tamborrino, Bluepoint’s founder and owner, entered the room, wearing a bright purple tie over a striped collared shirt. His dark, salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back. A few pens peeked out from his chest pocket.

He swiped us into a series of rooms: “Past all these locked doors,” he chuckled. We walked by a cluster of consultation rooms, also peppered with paintings of flowers. Tamborrino turns my attention to a glass case displaying a series of vaporizers that Bluepoint is encouraging its patients to use as an alternative to smoking.

“As you can see, there’s no marijuana displayed,” he says. “People aren’t sniffing jars like they are out West—this is a very professional set up.”

While Bluepoint is among six Connecticut dispensaries that opened their doors only a few weeks ago, state residents have been able to legally obtain marijuana for several ailments since October 2012 when Connecticut became the seventeenth state to decriminalize medical marijuana. Prior to the opening of state dispensaries, patients who qualified for medical marijuana had to obtain the drug through other means—a difficult task since only a quarter of the states where medical marijuana has been legalized accept medical marijuana ID cards from other states. The dispensary system offers patients a safer, more consistent avenue of obtaining marijuana and a wider variety of strains and potencies from which to choose.

***

A Bluepoint patient receives more than just a dose of weed upon visiting the dispensary; Tamborrino says that Bluepoint mirrors a medical office setting in which patients receive initial consultations, reviews of patient medical history, follow-up appointments, and even a set of treatment goals. Unlike many other states where medical marijuana has been decriminalized, Connecticut’s laws require a pharmacist at every dispensary.

“People think of marijuana dispensaries as what’s going on in Colorado, where it’s all basically recreational and anyone can apply for a license,” Tamborrino said. “That’s not the case here.”

Medical marijuana isn’t available for just any old patient either. Connecticut law states that for a patient to obtain a medical marijuana card, he or she must have one of 11 different medical conditions—from Glaucoma to Multiple Sclerosis—as confirmed by a doctor with whom they have a relationship. According to Samuel Wilkinson, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine, marijuana has been shown to be effective at alleviating neuropathic pain, nausea in cancer patients, spasticity in Multiple Sclerosis patients, and anorexia in HIV patients, but there is less evidence supporting the outcomes of marijuana use for the other conditions recognized by Connecticut law.

“It’s indicated for PTSD,” Wilkinson said. “Being a psychiatrist, that seems to me a little bit like the cart going before the horse.”

While the use of medical marijuana has been decriminalized by the state, the Federal Drug Administration hasn’t approved medical marijuana in the same way as other medications. Medical marijuana research has been lacking in the kind of rigorous clinical trials that might be used to certify, say, a new blood pressure medication, particularly given that it is still illegal in many states. According to Wilkinson, the use of medical marijuana has been passed so that some patients can take it without legal consequences, but the process has been inconsistent, based on testimonials and surveys rather than hard scientific evidence.

Tamborrino says that Bluepoint is involved in an international study group seeking to measure outcomes for patients receiving various cannabis strains, though Tamborrino admitted that he wouldn’t classify these studies as “clinical trials” per se. On an opt-in basis, these trials will track new Bluepoint patients throughout their experience as the dispensary continues to build on the momentum from these early weeks of its inception.

***

Bluepoint officially opened for business on Wed., Sept. 22 after an exhaustive application—due in November of last year—that included zoning approval, a description of finances in place, and a business plan. Bluepoint was one of six dispensaries awarded a license out of a pool of 27 total applicants.

“When I found we were awarded the license, I couldn’t believe it,” Tamborrino said. “It was so surreal to me. It’s still surreal. From the minute I started the application, I did everything on my own in terms of business planning and envisioning what the characteristics of Bluepoint would be. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent on the application.”

The road to obtaining a dispensary license was hard and long for other dispensary directors, too. Angela D’Amico, owner of the B&D Compassionate Care Center, a dispensary located in Bethel, sighed as she told me, “If you search my name online, you can read all about the municipalities we fought, the zoning appeals from neighbors—there’s a terrible stigma surrounding marijuana.”

A quick Google search does, in fact, support D’Amico’s battle to secure a location for their dispensary. According to an article in the Connecticut Post, she and her partner Karen Barski were denied zoning in both Stratford and Bridgeport before settling on an approved location in Bethel mere days before the license application was due.

Tamborrino said that the town of Branford was welcoming to Bluepoint, but his first choice for a dispensary site was in Norwalk.

“They weren’t as open to this because it’s still new,” he said. “I think people have to understand that Connecticut’s program is a lot different than any other program in the country.”

Although Bluepoint’s program is prioritizing expanding research on medical marijuana legalization, some believe it’s too early to offer pot as a legal consumer product, even within a pharmaceutical setting. Marijuana is an incredibly complex plant, comprised of a mixture of at least 100 different compounds that are combined in varying proportions depending on the strain. Tamborrino told me that not every strain gives off the psychoactive, “high” effect sought by many recreational marijuana users. Part of Bluepoint’s goal is to help patients isolate a strain that works best for their treatment goals, but medical researchers like Wilkinson are skeptical, saying the plant is still too variable at this point in the investigation to predict the effect the strain will have on the individual.

“I think there’s great therapeutic promise in the compounds that comprise marijuana,” Wilkinson said. “But crude marijuana? I just don’t know. I personally would advocate a ‘wait-until’ approach—conducting more research before deciding what is and isn’t safe.”

It’s also not clear how decriminalization will impact how the general population thinks about marijuana. Some argue that further legalization will make marijuana easier to regulate, though Wilkinson points out that alcohol and tobacco, the substances most difficult to keep out of the hands of adolescents, are legal for individuals of age. He has fears, too, about how the substance will be marketed and commercialized as if there are no risks associated with its use. “There’s a greater chance of experiencing negative effects the earlier marijuana is introduced to an adolescent,” Wilkinson said.

Tamborrino, on the other hand, has hopes that decriminalization will remove the stigma surrounding marijuana and educate the public on its potential as an alternative to opiates and other prescription drugs. As we talk, he often returns to the personal stories of patients that have visited Bluepoint in its first few weeks: brain-cancer patients, patients in wheelchairs, a twenty-five-year-old who was hit by a truck when he was twelve, a terminally-ill patient with a few months left, all just trying to improve their quality of life.

“Give the patient a choice for therapy,” Tamborrino said. “Why should a patient be isolated to opiates when they could have the same relief by using a natural plant?”

Connecticut’s medical marijuana industry still has room for growth. Only one of the four growing facilities in the state is distributing marijuana to dispensaries, causing a surge in prices that Tamborrino expects to fall when competition escalates and supply increases. Currently, Bluepoint is only offering five out of the 40-odd strains it expects to sell once grow facilities are up and running. “The prevailing sense is one of hopefulness that it provides relief to those who need it,” said Laurence Grotheer, director of communications for the New Haven mayor’s office. As I exit, I walk back through the three locked doors separating Tamborrino’s office from the rest of Branford. John Mayer plays softly over a stereo system in the lobby. There may be no jars of weed in sight, but that unmistakable odor lingers faintly in the air, then disappears as I step back out onto the parking lot asphalt.

At first, I wasn’t sure if The Trip to Italy amounted to more than snapshots of the Italian countryside, mouthwatering plates of pasta, and two Brits’ best impressions of Al Pacino and Michael Caine. This “second course” of a sequel to 2010’s The Trip follows Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing fictional versions of themselves) on a restaurant review trip through Italy, where they take their philandering and drollery just as seriously as their food criticism.

A warning: this film rambles along at the pace of…well…a lazy vacation in Tuscany. Seemingly aimless conversations over meals on sunlit cafe patios or chats in a convertible Mini Cooper comprise the majority of the film, and I was often left wanting more. The story would have benefited from stronger development of characters outside the trip, perhaps through flashbacks or vignettes. Still, what this movie lacks in narrative muscle, it makes up for in Coogan and Brydon’s witty one-liners.

Aside from the duo’s on-screen quips, The Trip to Italy finds a much-needed tenderness through poignant glimpses at their insecurities, especially regarding Coogan’s relationship with his son, who is acclimating to a new phase of life in LA. Coogan and Brydon contemplate the uncertainties of growing older, death, and what we leave behind. These moments are sparse and left unresolved, but they are still substantial enough to balance the lighthearted scenes.

This one is a no-go if you’re in the mood for a gripping plot—or any plot at all, really. But if you can look past that, you’re left with a hysterical amble through some of the most photogenic spots in Italy. And few can complain about that.