Pubdate: Tue, 15 Jan 2013
Source: New York Times ( NY )
Copyright: 2013 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
Author: Frank Bruni

COLORADO'S MARIJUANA MUDDLE

Colorado is going to pot.  It's just having a tough time figuring out how.

Although an Election Day referendum legalized marijuana for 
recreational use, it left questions unanswered.  Like: how high can 
you be behind the wheel of a car? Lawmakers are debating a specific 
blood level, as with alcohol, above which a motorist is deemed an 
uneasy rider.

In a restaurant or private club, might the dessert choices someday 
include an upscale riff on the pot brownie and a double entendre of a 
pot de creme? One lawyer I spoke with lofted this possibility, but 
who knows.  State officials still have many months to draft 
regulations for recreational pot's retail sale, which should begin 
next January.  The new law has already made recreational possession O.K.

Certainly, there will be a bigger workload for Denver's Craig 
Claiborne of cannabis, who began reviewing Colorado's medical 
marijuana dispensaries for the alternative newspaper Westword in 
2009.  Last month the critic, who writes under the pseudonym William 
Breathes, added a weekly advice column called "Ask a Stoner."

For a while now, Colorado has been deeper in the weed than most other 
states.  It permitted medical marijuana in 2000, and at dispensaries, 
of which there are now hundreds, a person with physician approval can 
choose among a dozen or more strains of pot, which vary in strength, 
hue, fragrance.  A dispensary named Denver Relief stocks Durban 
Poison, which promises a fruity aroma "with undertones of milk 
chocolate," and ChemDawgD, with its "strong smell of Pine-Sol and jet fuel."

There are different delivery systems as well.  If a patient doesn't 
like to smoke, he or she can try marijuana cola, marijuana baklava, 
marijuana bath salts.

"The baklava is excellent," said Breathes, who has a stomach 
condition for which he got a medical marijuana card.  ( The card has 
his real name; his nom de plume protects him from exposure when he 
presents it.  )

But the referendum puts Colorado, along with the state of Washington, 
whose voters also opened the door to bong hits purely for pleasure, 
on new legal terrain.

"This will be a complicated process," announced Colorado Gov.  John 
Hickenlooper shortly after the referendum passed.  "Don't break out 
the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly."

These were the words of a man who had inhaled in the past - he admits 
as much, though he says it was 15 years ago - and seems to know 
something about the munchies.  And they pointed to another 
interesting wrinkle of the Colorado story: the marijuana muddle will 
be tackled by a politician who rose to local prominence in the 
intoxication business, as the owner of popular brewpubs.

When I caught up with him here recently, he volunteered that a 
paleontologist with whom he's friendly believes that cannabis and 
hops, which are flowers used to make beer, have a shared 
horticultural ancestry.

"If you take hops, and you grind them up in your fingers, they smell 
just like what I'm told marijuana smells like," said Hickenlooper, who is 60.

"That was a joke," he added, meaning the "I'm told" part.

He actually opposed Amendment 64, the measure that legalized 
recreational pot, and didn't greet its passage with reefer 
gladness.  Although it applies only to adults, he worries that kids 
will feel emboldened and that frequent marijuana use could hurt them.

I shadowed him for a few days, including to Colorado Springs, where 
he disappeared into a meeting with a local newspaper's editorial 
board.  More of the questions he was asked touched on marijuana than 
on gun control, an aide said.

The next morning I arrived midway through a Q.  and A.  that he did 
with the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance, and what do you 
suppose he was discussing? Pot.

The alarm is confusing.  For many years in many places, pot has been 
prevalent and its casual use often overlooked.  Enforcement of laws 
against possession has been uneven, to a point where New York leaders 
want to move away from small-scale pot arrests.

Presidential candidates have felt free to allude or own up to past 
marijuana use.  So why all the hand wringing over pot's legalization, 
when its illegality isn't always taken seriously? If we have a 
problem with pot, we sure haven't behaved that way.

Colorado and Washington aren't being experimental so much as 
honest.  They're acknowledging reality, and giving people the same 
chance with pot as with alcohol: to use it responsibly - or 
not.  They'll also pick up some tax revenue in the process.

And perhaps Breathes will need a co-critic.  Patricia Calhoun, the 
editor of Westword, told me she gets applications.  But, she added, 
they're responses to the initial announcement she posted more than 
three years ago.

"A lot of potheads don't move very fast," she said. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D