Pubdate: Tue, 06 Sep 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Joshua Miller

IN COLORADO, A COUNTY REVOLTS AGAINST LEGALIZED MARIJUANA

PUEBLO WEST, Colo. - Out here, in this unincorporated community of 
30,000, there are miles of barren scrub-brush dotted with wild 
sunflowers. Low-slung houses sit on East Gun Powder Lane and North 
Cougar Drive. There's a Walmart Supercenter, a Little Caesars, a 
Safeway with a small Starbucks tucked inside.

And, throughout the area, a revolt against retail marijuana sales 
smolders in a state awash in $1 billion of legal pot.

Four years ago, Coloradans voted to legalize marijuana for adults, 
and gave individual localities the opportunity to decide if they 
would allow retail marijuana shops.

But after local officials here welcomed the new industry, 
anti-marijuana activists in Pueblo County gathered enough signatures 
to force an unprecedented question on the November ballot: whether to 
terminate recreational marijuana sales and operations.

The Pueblo campaign comes just as Massachusetts and four other states 
are poised to vote on marijuana legalization Nov. 8. The debate in 
Colorado serves as a cautionary tale about the ambivalence of a 
community that has lived with legal marijuana and its myriad 
consequences, negative and positive.

Backers of the Pueblo repeal effort say retail marijuana shops and 
farms have brought increased vagrancy, crime, and an undesirable 
reputation as the pot capital of southern Colorado. Supporters of the 
status quo say the new industry has helped revitalize an area that 
has long struggled economically. Repeal, they say, would cost more 
than a thousand jobs. It would be giving in to the retrograde 
impulses of "prohibitionists."

Possessing and using marijuana will remain legal in the county if 
voters back the measure. So will shops selling medical marijuana. But 
the facilities that are engaged in the recreational trade - more than 
100 dispensaries, cultivation facilities, and infused product 
manufacturers - would have to shut down within a year.

The ballot question will force voters here to balance an array of 
competing claims. Has life in the county changed for better or for 
worse since the first dispensary opened in early 2014? Has crime gone 
up or down? Are the increased economic activity, jobs, and tax 
revenue worth the cost?

And is it wise - or even possible - to put the marijuana genie back 
in the bottle?

. . .

Paula McPheeters, a budget manager at the local community college who 
is leading the ballot effort, says she got involved after an off-hand 
comment from one of her sons.

As she tells it, she was driving with him down a main drag in West 
Pueblo. The fifth-grader, who had just finished a D.A.R.E anti-drug 
program at school, spotted a dispensary and asked why marijuana was 
being sold legally in their hometown. McPheeters didn't have a good answer.

But when he asked what she was going to do about it, McPheeters, 45, 
said it was an epiphany moment. She started attending county 
commissioner meetings, opposing new marijuana facilities.

A registered Republican, she expressed worry about rising crime and 
what she saw as a sharp uptick in homelessness. "I don't mean your 
typical down-and-out guy in his 60s with a bottle," she said. "I'm 
talking 20-somethings. And that's what really struck me: What are 
they doing here?"

Pueblo County is split between the city of Pueblo (population: 
109,000) and a sprawling rural area (population: 54,000). The 
majority of city voters cast ballots to legalize marijuana in 2012, 
but the majority of the rest of the county voted against it. Yet all 
of the recreational shops, grow operations, and marijuana product 
manufacturers ended up outside the city.

So, McPheeters says, she and her fellow residents who are most 
directly impacted by the industry want a direct say in whether it 
stays or goes. (The county and city will have separate repeal ballot 
measures, so the vote in one won't affect the vote in the other.)

But at the heart of her argument is another factor: She doesn't like 
how legalization changed small things in her family's daily life.

McPheeters bristles at the potent smell of marijuana when she drives 
past some of the cultivation facilities. She hates that her kids' 
school is near several dispensaries. She's frustrated by the 
full-page ads in the local paper with huge photos of buds and coupons 
for $1 joints with a purchase of $20 or more.

"We don't want our community identified by this anymore," McPheeters said.

. . .

County Commissioner Sal Pace, the chief opponent of the ballot 
effort, likes that his community is seen as a center for marijuana 
innovation. There are more than 1,300 Pueblo County jobs in the 
industry, according to its own count. And, Pace said, almost $4 
million in annual tax revenue has gone to college scholarships, 4H 
and Future Farmers of America efforts, medical marijuana research at 
Colorado State University Pueblo, among other areas.

Pace, a Democrat, notes that the county - much poorer on average than 
Colorado as a whole - is getting in on the ground floor of an 
industry that could go national in the years to come.

"That's one thing opponents here in Pueblo don't understand," he 
said. "It's going to be legalized nationally no matter what and they 
can be left behind if they want, but if they do it to our community 
it's one more really hard attack on Pueblo, one more lost 
opportunity. It's like the steel mill closing again."

Pace likes the idea, as he told Fortune magazine recently, of his 
home turf being "like the Napa Valley of cannabis."

What Pace doesn't like: the prospect of suddenly killing the progress 
that county has made.

The ballot measure to roll back the recreational marijuana industry, 
he said, would have a "huge and tragic" impact on the economy.

In an interview with the Globe over lunch at the Colorado State Fair, 
the sound of livestock braying in the background, Pace decried the 
referendum effort as driven by "narrow-minded NIMBYism."

But Pace, the father of three young children, dismissed the idea that 
the cannabis industry had fundamentally changed the feel of the community.

And with predictions of a $20 billion legal marijuana industry 
nationwide by 2020, he had a question for the proponents of the 
ballot push: "Why don't you want that free money?"

. . .

Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk M. Taylor, who has been on the job for 10 
years and in law enforcement for almost 30, doesn't think 
legalization has been without a cost, and he will definitely vote for 
the repeal.

"It's almost the perfect storm," he said. "Inviting the industry here 
brings with it the collateral issues that we're seeing now in Pueblo. 
Whether it be increased emergency room visits, increasing crime, 
nuisance crimes."

Serious crimes - like murder, rape, and arson - are actually down 
over the past 21/2 years, he said. But nuisance crimes - such as 
simple assaults, harassment, vandalism - are up.

"The media decides which narrative they want to perpetuate," Taylor 
said, chuckling.

Taylor notes, however, there has been a proliferation of busts of 
black-market marijuana operations. The culprits are often from other 
states or countries and sometimes affiliated with cartels.

"None of the busts I have done within Pueblo County with these 
home-grows have been anything related to recreational marijuana - 
except for the fact that they are here because we have become such a 
marijuana-friendly county. It's the only correlation or nexus you can 
draw between the two," he said.

Predictions that legalization would kill the black market, Taylor 
noted, were false. Criminals from everywhere, he said, are attracted 
to Pueblo because they think it is a good place to grow cannabis.

Just recently, Taylor said, he arrested more than 17 Cuban-Americans 
from Florida, two Russians, and an Argentinian.

"They're not coming for any other reason than to grow marijuana to 
take out of state," he said.

Yet Mason Tvert, a key Colorado and national legalization advocate, 
said the idea of eliminating a legal, regulated market as a way to 
undermine the black market is logically unsound.

He said the problem is not Colorado's law, it's the fact that other 
states don't have Colorado's law.

. . .

With rain on the horizon, dozens of shoppers headed for the Safeway 
in Pueblo West one evening last week. Residents were split on whether 
to embrace the marijuana repeal - and it's not clear how the vote 
will shake out.

Shannon McPherson, a social worker, said marijuana legalization has 
"been bad for the whole Pueblo community."

The 47-year-old, who works at a hospital, said "we see a lot more 
homeless people - we see a lot of people that have come without 
resources, that end up tapping our resources."

Jason White, 44, owns a property management company and expressed 
frustration he has had to deal with marijuana-smoking squatters in 
some of his properties.

"We've got more crime. We've got more people on the street. Our 
hospitals are filled with people," he said. And what of the economic 
benefits? It's a net negative, he insisted. The extra revenue that 
comes in, "all it's doing is going to the overwhelmed homeless 
shelters, hospitals, and the police."

Davis Dossantos, 43, said he's seen an uptick in vagrancy and 
panhandling since legalization.

But, walking out of the grocery store, Dossantos said he would vote 
against the ballot initiative because, he indicated, people will 
still use marijuana but will probably not drive somewhere else to buy 
it legally.

"You're not really tackling the issue," he said, shaking his head. 
"You're forcing the individuals to go back to the drug dealers, and 
the black market will flourish even more."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom