Pubdate: Sun, 22 Mar 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165
Authors: Pula Davis, Wayne Laugesen, Christine Tatum

REGULATION STILL INEFFECTIVE

The promises of Colorado's Amendment 64 largely hinged on two words 
blazing from campaign signs dotting the state before the historic 
November 2012 vote that legalized recreational marijuana for people 
21 and older: Regulation works. But how it would work was described 
only in general terms and sound bites before voters headed to the 
polls to make a decision Gov. John Hickenlooper later would call 
"reckless" and "a bad idea" and new Colorado Attorney General Cynthia 
Coffman declared "not worth it" to dozens of state attorneys general 
last month.

The pro-Amendment 64 campaign's website claimed that "by regulating 
marijuana like alcohol, Colorado can further reduce teen marijuana 
use, minimize teens' access to marijuana, reduce exposure to more 
dangerous drugs and take sales out of the hands of criminals."

After the first year of the drug's recreational legalization, 
professionals working on the front lines of marijuana's impact - at 
police departments, addiction treatment centers, child welfare 
organizations - say Colorado put commerce ahead of kids, communities, 
public health and safety. The state opened itself up for the drug's 
trade without establishing and enforcing many crucially important 
limits and without adequately funding the data collection and 
analysis required for Colorado - and the rest of the United States - 
to determine whether marijuana legalization is wise.

Colorado officials can't even say how much marijuana is produced and 
sold in the state because a black market continues to thrive. The 
seed-to-sale tracking program highly touted by state officials and 
marijuana-industry leaders does not address diversion of the drug 
after the point of sale.

"I realize the story keeps changing and that plenty of people now 
want to describe abject regulatory failures as an experiment or one 
big startup experiencing typical growing pains," said Ben Cort, 
director of professional relations for the Center for Addiction 
Recovery and Rehabilitation at the University of Colorado Hospital. 
"But the ugly truth is that Colorado was suckered. It was promised 
regulation and has been met by an industry that fights tooth and nail 
any restrictions that limit its profitability. Just like Big Tobacco 
before it, the marijuana industry derives profits from addiction - 
state officials euphemistically call that heavy use - and its 
survival depends on turning a percentage of kids into lifelong customers."

The costs of launching a regulatory scheme for the sale and 
distribution of cannabis were anyone's guess - and they still are as 
Colorado heads into its second year of the drug's legalization for 
recreational use. Potential unexpected costs are on the horizon as 
Colorado is mired in legal questions about lower-than-projected tax 
revenues and suits filed against it by the state governments of 
Nebraska and Oklahoma. Those states' attorneys general have asked to 
appear before the U.S. Supreme Court to explain why Colorado's 
regulation not only isn't working but is harming their states and the 
rest of the country.

Indeed, Colorado hasn't lived up to many of the basics of the 
regulatory framework approved by the state Legislature in 2013 and 
2014, much less to the campaign promises of Amendment 64. State 
reports do not answer many questions about how marijuana is produced, 
sold, distributed and used:

The state has not launched a system to test marijuana and THC-infused 
foods and drinks, called "edibles," for contaminants. It promises to 
do so this year.

In the past year, tests conducted by news organizations have found 
discrepancies between the potency levels recorded on marijuana 
product packaging and the goods inside. Colorado has outsourced 
potency testing to privately held businesses, awarding 16 licenses 
for testing facilities by the end of last year. But such testing is 
not required for marijuana and THC-infused products used for medical 
purposes - the bulk of Colorado's marijuana market.

Colorado officials have not released even aggregate data showing the 
potency of marijuana sold in accordance with state law.

The problem of determining the impact of Colorado's legal marijuana 
runs much deeper than what state officials are able to report. The 
state does not have the funding, tools or training to gauge marijuana 
legalization's impact on public resources and communities. Fully 
equipping state guardians of public health and safety to collect and 
analyze this data must become a priority, said Ed Wood, director of 
DUID Victim Voices, a national group advocating for stronger 
drugged-driving laws.

"Colorado owes it to our country to accurately and fully report on 
marijuana's consumption, sale, distribution and societal impact, but 
that level of data do not exist and may never exist if Americans 
don't demand greater accountability of this state," said Wood, whose 
tireless voice in state legislative halls has demanded better data 
collection and reporting since his son was killed by a drugged driver.

State marijuana regulators have focused less on analyzing the data 
they have collected, choosing instead to direct most of their time 
and resources to keeping the state's cannabis industry from forcing 
the hands of federal officials who have opted not to enforce federal 
law. It's an abdication of responsibility in Washington, D.C., that 
former Attorney General John Suthers has noted in defense of Colorado 
against the legal challenges mounted by Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Then there are the data Colorado officials know the state does not 
collect and must if it is ever going to have a shot at understanding 
the impact of the drug's legalization. In January, a governor- 
appointed task force started meeting to determine the priorities and 
processes for gathering marijuana-related data. The costs of 
procuring, analyzing and reporting that voluminous information are 
many months - and maybe even years - away from being determined, said 
Marco Vasquez, chief of the Erie Police Department and a task force member.

"While the commercial marijuana industry continues to ramp up, 
Colorado still operates in a zone of not knowing what it doesn't know 
about marijuana and the expansion of drug legalization, and people 
are getting hurt," said Vasquez, who is also a former director of 
investigations for the Colorado Division of Medical Marijuana 
Enforcement. "Voters were sold a bill of goods, and I don't think 
they really understand what they did.

"The industry behind it is another Big Tobacco that has millions and 
millions of dollars to spend on influencing media and public policy - 
which will always outpace the findings of reputable science and the 
public workings of government."

Since the opening of recreational pot shops on Jan. 1, 2014, some 
data support that regulation is not having its intended effect:

Colorado youths remain among the nation's heaviest cannabis users, 
with usage increasing at the second-highest rate in the nation. They 
use strains of the drug widely considered among the world's most 
potent. Denver schools reported a 7 percent increase in drug-related 
arrests on campus during the 2013-14 school year over the previous 
year, jumping from 452 to 482 arrests. Middle schools across Colorado 
reported 951 drug violations, a 10-year record. County and state 
education officials attribute the increases to marijuana.

Local addiction treatment centers are reporting more admissions for 
marijuana addiction. Among them is the CU adult-treatment hospital, 
which is continuing to track numbers, said Cort, the center's 
director of professional relations.

Colorado hospitals are reporting sharp increases in the number of 
children admitted for marijuana exposure, including accidental 
ingestion. A state committee charged with rule-making for edibles 
disbanded in November without reaching consensus.

Black-market sales are booming at such high rates that they've been 
blamed for cannabis tax revenues that are tens of millions of dollars 
short of initial projections and campaign slogans. While speaking to 
a conference of other attorneys general last month, Coffman blasted 
legalization advocates' linchpin argument that regulating sales would 
eliminate the black market, reduce associated criminal activity and 
free up law enforcement agencies' resources. "Don't buy that 
argument," she said, according to U.S. News & World Report. "The 
criminals are still selling on the black market. ... We have plenty 
of cartel activity in Colorado (and) plenty of illegal activity that 
has not decreased at all."

More than 30 hash-oil explosions occurred last year, prompting local 
and state authorities to call for laws prohibiting oil production in 
residential homes. At the end of last month, Colorado Springs 
authorities responded to a fire caused by hash-oil extraction in a 
home just south of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. 
"We'd never even heard of a hash-oil explosion before marijuana 
legalization," said Vasquez, the Erie police chief.

Colorado is only beginning to learn how to collect information about 
marijuana-related driving arrests. In 2014, the Colorado State Patrol 
issued 674 marijuana-related driving citations. The agency typically 
issues about 20 percent of the state's DUI citations each year.

Then there are the more mundane problems faced by Coloradans like 
John and Lisa Young and their teen daughter, who couldn't escape the 
odor of marijuana wafting into their Lakewood apartment from a 
neighboring unit. The couple insisted the management firm supervising 
the property enforce its stated ban on the drug's use - living up to 
the drug-free-community signs posted in its administrative offices - 
or move their family to a unit where they wouldn't be bothered by the 
odor of pot. At the end of their nine-month lease last year, the 
Youngs and the property management firm agreed that the Youngs needed 
to live somewhere else.

"At every level of governance - from the state Legislature and 
governor's office to homeowners' associations - Colorado has shown 
many times in just one year that it cannot muster the political will 
to regulate legal marijuana as it must be, that it doesn't have the 
resources to enforce many of the regulations on the books," Lisa Young said.

The current level of regulation effectiveness may have been foretold.

In January 2013, debates among members of a governor-appointed task 
force charged with recommending to state lawmakers rules for the 
implementation of Amendment 64 focused more on money than on matters 
of public health and safety.

When task force members ranked eight primary "principles" on which 
their deliberations were to focus, "Be responsive to consumer needs 
and issues" was placed second only to "Developing guidance for 
certain relationships, such as employer/employee ... " - an area of 
cannabis regulation that remains fraught with problems for Colorado employers.

Last on the list? "Promote the health, safety and well being of 
Colorado youth." What else ranked lower on the list than "consumer 
needs?" This principle: "Ensure our streets, schools and communities 
remain safe."

In early March 2013, the New York-based drug-abuse-prevention 
advocacy group The Partnership at drugfree.org released a survey of 
1,603 adults living across the country - 200 of whom were Coloradans 
with children ages 10-19, and 200 of whom were parents of children in 
the same age range in Washington state, which also voted to legalize 
recreational cannabis. The survey provided one of the first glimpses 
of the restrictions on cannabis that adults 18 and older - and 
specifically parents surveyed - expected.

The research findings were announced in July 2013 at the University 
of Denver, where a couple of hundred people gathered to learn more 
about the challenges of regulating legal cannabis from an expert 
panel that included former Colorado Attorney General Suthers and 
former senior White House drug policy adviser Tom McLellan, a 
world-recognized substance abuse researcher and co-founder of the 
Philadelphia-based Treatment Research Institute.

The panel noted that while Coloradans surveyed expressed overwhelming 
support for tight cannabis regulation, they may not have understood 
what a large and complex undertaking that would be.

"Horribly naive," McLellan said during an interview after the event. 
"It appears people here are horribly naive about how regulation works 
and what it costs."

Consider:

High percentages of parents (90 percent of Colorado parents and 91 
percent of Washington parents) said marijuana should be banned in 
public places where tobacco is banned. Today, public use of the drug 
is illegal, but police in Colorado Springs - where recreational sales 
are prohibited - wrote 52 citations for public pot smoking last year, 
and Denver County reported a 451 percent increase in public use 
citations. Vaporizers and e-cigarette devices have made it difficult 
to police public use.

Of Colorado parents surveyed, 87 percent said "marijuana advertising 
should still be banned." And when forced to choose, a majority of 
parents identified the No. 1 place where it should be permissible to 
advertise marijuana as "nowhere."

Today, marijuana is advertised locally in free publications available 
in convenience stores, on prominent storefront signs and on 24/7 
social media networks and websites. "Sesame Street's" beloved Cookie 
Monster recently was painted on the wall of Wellstone Medical 
Marijuana, a Colorado Springs dispensary - but quickly removed after 
lawyers for Sesame Workshop sent a cease and desist letter.

"Cognitive dissonance. That's what I see here," Suthers said of the 
survey's results during the 2013 presentation. "You can't say you 
want legalized marijuana and then you don't want your kids exposed to 
it." He added: "History (with alcohol and tobacco regulation) 
suggests we're not going to be very successful at (banning the 
commercialization of a legal industry). Don't count on any corporate 
responsibility. Don't look for the online folks to cooperate.

"I just don't want anybody to fall into this notion that we are going 
to regulate this and everything is going to be fine."

[sidebar]

Day 1: REGULATION

Two important assumptions about successful legalization of marijuana 
in Colorado were:

1.) Regulation would provide a safer solution to the state's drug problems.

2.) By regulating the sale of marijuana the state could make money 
otherwise locked up in the black market.

Today's stories suggest the net gain from taxes and fees related to 
marijuana sales will not be known for a while, as costs are not known 
or tracked well, and there are many other unknowns about pot's 
effects on public health and safety.

About the series

After the first year of recreational pot sales, The Gazette takes a 
comprehensive look at the unintended consequences of legalizing sales 
and use of recreational marijuana.

Day 1: Colorado has a fragile scheme for regulating legal marijuana 
and implementing a state drug prevention strategy.

Day 2: One of the suppositions about legalizing pot was that 
underground sales would be curtailed, but officials say there is 
evidence of a thriving black market.

Day 3: One teen's struggle to overcome his marijuana addiction shows 
how devastating the effects of the drug can be for younger, more 
vulnerable users.

Day 4: Amid the hoopla about recreational marijuana sales, the 
medical marijuana industry is flourishing and has its own set of 
complicated concerns.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom