Pubdate: Thu, 03 Jul 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

COMMERCIAL CANNABIS AT SIX MONTHS: THE SKY HASN'T FALLEN

We are just past the six-month point in the state's roll-out of 
commercial sales of cannabis, and from all indications, it's been an 
unspectacular but successful half a year, especially for a state 
whose social experiment has been under local and international media 
scrutiny since Amendment 64 passed in November of 2012.

Half a year is hardly enough for a serious analysis, but as 
Department of Revenue Director Ron Kammerzell told Vox: "I would say 
that the rollout was extremely smooth, the sky hasn't fallen like 
some had predicted, and we're moving forward and trying to fine tune 
this regulatory model."

A report issued last week by the Drug Policy Alliance, entitled 
Marijuana Regulation in Colorado After Six Months of Retail Sales and 
18 Months of Decriminalization, backs up that contention.

The state collected $10.8 million in tax revenues through April, a 
number that will continue to climb as more shops open and people get 
comfortable with legal cannabis. And that's not counting city and 
county excise and sales taxes collected and not yet reported.

In a possibly related development, the Colorado Department of Public 
Health and Environment reports that the number of people enrolled in 
the Marijuana Registry Program has risen to its highest number in 
three years. At the end of April there were 116,180 patients on the 
registry. That may indicate that people are obtaining medical cards 
to keep away from retail taxes, but there is no way of knowing if 
that is true or not.

The DPA report notes that since legalization, police haven't been 
arresting anyone for criminal possession. Since the state averaged 
about 10,000 possession arrests per year through 2010, that should 
already be providing substantial savings, freeing law enforcement to 
do something else besides arrest cannabis users and saving endless 
hours of paperwork involved in processing those arrests.

Besides paying taxes to the state, cities and counties, industry 
businesses currently employ about 10,000 people, with more retail 
shops, testing and grow facilities opening around the state every 
month. Businesses that provide everything from hardware for grow 
operations to software for retail stores continue to proliferate and thrive.

There are no hard numbers here, either, but Gov. John Hickenlooper, 
who opposed Amendment 64, admits that the industry has helped keep 
the state more economically viable in tough economic times and that 
his worries about Colorado becoming known as the "stoner state" have 
so far been unwarranted.

The report also indicates that FBI statistics show a 10.1 percent 
decrease in overall crime from 2013 and a 5.2 percent drop in violent 
crime over the same period last year. Dispensary robberies are down 
in Denver from this time last year.

I'm still on the fence when it comes to saying that legal cannabis 
sales have anything to do with overall crime numbers, but one 
encouraging figure came when the state also released information 
about its efforts to keep retail cannabis stores from selling or 
marketing to underage kids. The state conducted 16 sting operations 
in which it tried to get minors to purchase cannabis at retail stores 
in Denver and Pueblo. None succeeded.

Which brings up an interesting point. At a recent Denver Post forum, 
a panelist said that among the unwanted effects of Amendment 64 is 
that it makes parenting more difficult. I can sympathize with that; 
parenting has never been easy. But young people aren't getting 
cannabis or edibles from retail shops. Neither are companion animals. 
They're getting it in their own from friends' homes or the black 
market. Shouldn't the money the state will be spending on education 
be aimed as much at adults and parents as young people and children?

News headlines have focused on tragedy, especially two distressing 
events, one in which a young man who came from out of state 
apparently consumed too much of an edible and wound up leaping from a 
hotel balcony to his death, the other a man who apparently had eaten 
a cannabis edible and taken prescription drugs before shooting and 
killing his wife.

The full stories, especially about the second case, haven't come out 
yet. But another story, this one of a young man police said was too 
stoned and plowed into two police cars whose lights were flashing. We 
didn't find out until sentencing that the man was seriously 
intoxicated, which probably better explains his actions that night.

There has also been an uptick of adults and children reported in 
emergency rooms due to accidental "overdose" of edibles. "Overdose" 
is really not the correct term, since nobody can die from cannabis 
ingestion, and an "overdose" is more just waiting for the drug to 
leave your system. What is often lost is that edibles are extremely 
popular among consumers and that millions of dollars worth have been 
eaten by people of all ages over the last six months without 
requiring hospitalization or any other problems. The legislature 
followed up last year's first round of rules and regs with more 
complete ones about edibles packaging and consistency. But no matter 
how much information is on the label, some people are not going to 
read or heed it.

Given that this is a product whose businesses for the most part are 
not allowed access to banking or tax benefits and is still considered 
by more than half the states and the federal government as illegal 
and whose every move is being scrutinized, it's been a pretty solid rollout.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom