Pubdate: Fri, 30 Nov 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298

IN COLORADO, NO PLAYBOOK FOR NEW MARIJUANA LAW

DENVER - Anthony Orozco, 19, a community college student and soccer 
player in southeastern Colorado, is facing criminal charges for 
something that will soon be legal across this state: the possession 
of a few nuggets of marijuana and a pipe he used to smoke it.

Colorado and Washington State legalized certain recreational use of the drug.

Mr. Orozco said that one day in September he and a few friends were 
driving in Lamar, on the plains near the Kansas border, when they 
were pulled over. After the police officer found marijuana in the 
car, Mr. Orozco was issued a summons for possession and drug 
paraphernalia - petty offenses that each carry a $100 fine - and 
given a court date.

"We get treated like criminals," Mr. Orozco said.

But is he one? In the uncertain weeks after Colorado's vote to 
legalize small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, the answer 
in hundreds of minor drug cases depends less on the law than on location.

Hundreds of misdemeanor marijuana cases are already being dropped 
here and in Washington State, which approved a similar measure. 
Police departments have stopped charging adults 21 years and older 
for small-scale possession that will be legally sanctioned once the 
laws take effect in the coming weeks.

But prosecutors in more conservative precincts in Colorado have vowed 
to press ahead with existing marijuana cases and are still citing 
people for possession. At the same time, several towns from the 
Denver suburbs to the Western mountains are voting to block new, 
state-licensed retail marijuana shops from opening in their communities.

"This thing is evolving so quickly that I don't know what's going to 
happen next," said Daniel J. Oates, the police chief in Aurora, just 
east of Denver.

Regulators in Washington State are also scratching their heads. And 
they are looking for guidance on how to set up a system of licenses 
for production, manufacturing, distribution and sales - all by a 
deadline of Dec. 1, 2013. They say that Colorado, for better or 
worse, is ahead of most states in regulating marijuana, first for 
medical use and now recreationally.

"Colorado has a more regulated market, so they will be a good guide," 
said Brian E. Smith, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor 
Control Board. But no place or system, Mr. Smith conceded, can do 
more than suggest what might work. "There's no real precedent for us 
to follow," he said.

Washington's law, called I-502, takes effect on Dec. 6, which also 
leaves a year of limbo during which the state licensing system will 
not yet exist, but legalized possession will. And there are thorny 
mechanical questions that must be resolved during that time, like how 
to balance the state's mandate of "adequate access" to licensed 
marijuana with its prohibitions on cannabis businesses within 1,000 
feet of a school, park, playground or child care center.

"Nowhere will it be more difficult to site a licensed cannabis 
business than in urban areas, particularly in the Seattle 
metropolitan area," said Ben Livingston, a spokesman for the Center 
for Legal Cannabis, a recently formed research group.

On Nov. 21, Chief Oates in Aurora sent his officers an e-mail 
announcing that the city attorney would no longer be prosecuting 
small marijuana violations for anyone 21 years or older, and that the 
police would stop charging people for those crimes "effective immediately."

Chief Oates said that the police would enforce city codes regulating 
medical marijuana growers, and that they would still pursue drug 
traffickers and dealers.

In northern Colorado's Weld County, the district attorney, Ken Buck, 
represents a stricter view. After the vote, he said his office would 
continue pursuing marijuana possession cases, mostly as a way to 
press users into getting treatment. Right now, 119 people face 
charges of possessing two ounces or less of marijuana, though many 
are facing other charges.

"Our office has an obligation to prosecute offenses that were crimes 
at the time they occurred," Mr. Buck said in a statement.

The response has been complicated even in places like rural Mesa 
County, where voters rejected the marijuana initiative. The police in 
Grand Junction, the county's largest city, are no longer citing 
adults for possession of small amounts. The county's district 
attorney, Pete Hautzinger, supported that decision, but also decided 
not to dismiss all of the pending possession cases.

"I do not think I'm wasting my time continuing to enforce the law 
until it changes," he said.

Although 55 percent of Colorado voters supported the measure, 
bringing recreational marijuana into the folds of government and the 
legal system was never going to be simple. And the contradictory 
reactions across the state lay bare a deep ambivalence among local 
officials about the state's big green experiment.

"It's a cultural barrier" with district attorneys, said Sean 
McAllister, a Denver lawyer who represents marijuana defendants and 
is a local spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of 
Marijuana Laws.

"They spent so much of their lives prosecuting people that they still 
don't really accept that this is legal," he said.

As the first states to treat small amounts of marijuana like alcohol, 
Colorado and Washington are poised to become national test cases for 
drug legalization. As advocates and state officials plan for a new 
frontier of legalized sales, they are also anxiously awaiting 
direction from the federal government, which still plans to treat the 
sale and cultivation of marijuana as federal crimes.

Advocates for legalized marijuana are hoping the Justice Department 
yields. Despite some high-profile arrests of medical marijuana 
patients and sellers, the federal government has mostly allowed 
medical marijuana businesses to operate in Colorado, Washington and 
16 other states.

While drug agents will probably not beat down doors to seize a small 
bag of the drug, they are likely to balk at allowing the 
state-regulated recreational marijuana shops allowed under the new 
laws, said Kevin A. Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama 
administration.

Several cities in Colorado are not waiting for federal authorities to 
act. Even before Election Day, some local governments approved 
moratoriums on any new marijuana shops, even though it will be about 
a year before any can open. Last week, the western city of Montrose 
took up a six-month ban, and is likely to pass it next week.

"We don't want to be put in a position where we license somebody and 
then have a big federal issue," said Bob Nicholson, a City Council 
member. "Our community voted against this amendment. We're looking at 
what the community voted for versus what the state voted for. There's 
an awful lot of questions."

Kirk Johnson contributed reporting from Seattle.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom