Colorado politicians ignore major pot problems
by Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board | 10/1/18
Colorado politicians need to stop pandering and start leading, which means telling the truth about the severely negative consequences of big commercial pot.
Hickenlooper, Gardner, and other politicians tell us everything is rosy, but that’s not what we hear from educators, cops, social workers, doctors, drug counselors, parents, and others in the trenches of the world’s first anything goes marijuana free-for-all. It is not what we see in the streets.
If Hickenlooper and Gardner cared to lead on this issue, they would tell the world about the rate of pot-involved traffic fatalities that began soaring in their state in direct correlation with the emergence of legal recreational pot and Big Marijuana. They would talk about Colorado’s status as a national leader in the growth of homelessness, which all major homeless shelter operators attribute to commercialized, recreational pot.
They would talk about the difficulty in keeping marijuana from crossing borders into states that don’t allow it. They would spread the words of classroom educators and resource officers who say pot consumption among teens is out of control.
Honest leaders would talk about illegal grow operations invading neighborhoods and public lands. They would stop selling false, positive impressions about a failed policy for the sake of “respecting the will of voters” who made a mistake. They would not follow public perception but would lead it in a truthful direction.
Hickenlooper says legalization has eliminated illegal pot in Colorado, which is laughable to men and women who enforce the law and talk to us.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder speaks of more than 550 illegal rural home-grow operations in El Paso County alone.
Mayor John Suthers – Colorado’s former U.S. attorney, attorney general, district prosecutor and state director of corrections – speaks of hundreds of illegal pot operations in Colorado Springs he hopes to raid. We could go on with countless accounts of leading law enforcers who describe illegal pot activity that exceeds limits of departmental budgets and personnel.
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