Pubdate: Sat, 24 Nov 2012
Source: Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Fort Collins Coloradoan
Contact: http://www.coloradoan.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.coloradoan.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1580
Author: Dick Heyman
Note: Dick Heyman lives in Fort Collins.

WYOMING BURYING HEAD IN SAND ABOUT DRUG PROBLEMS

I was amazed to read in the Nov. 17 Coloradoan about Wyoming's 
response to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado.

First let me make a blanket statement about driving impaired:

Whether it is pot, alcohol, illegal drugs or legal prescription drugs 
with caveats on their labels, driving a motor vehicle or operating 
hazardous machinery while using them is dangerous, forbidden by law, 
irresponsible and violators need to deal with the consequences. 
Taking personal responsibility for one's actions is critical to a 
civilized society.

Wyoming State Troopers who bust dangerous drivers who are driving 
impaired are lifesavers.

I had the opportunity to work in Cheyenne, Wyo., for almost two years 
and carpooled along Interstate 25 for most of that time. The 
intersection of I-80 and I-25 in Cheyenne is a major trucking 
pass-through, and lower speeds are reasonable and well-enforced.

Driving while high on pot is dangerous, but driving drunk is 
murderous, causing tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of 
thousands of injuries every year. When I first saw drive-up liquor 
stores in Cheyenne, some attached to bars, I was horrified. As with 
the rest of the U.S., Wyoming's No. 1 drug problem continues to be 
alcohol, whether anyone admits it or not. They also have a serious 
problem with crystal meth. Operators of mines and oil fields often 
struggle to get enough workers who can pass drug tests.

In Cheyenne, I worked for the department of health, and they had 
serious programs going after another drug issue, tobacco. They were 
trying to dissuade youths from using chewing tobacco and snuff. Quite 
a hard sell when the huge annual rodeo was sponsored by chewing 
tobacco until 2010.

Every dollar that they waste prosecuting young casual pot smokers is 
a dollar not spent on their real drug problems.

Of course, Wyoming has always been a conundrum. They were the first 
state to enfranchise women. They pay their public school teachers 
much better than Colorado. The tuition at the University of Wyoming 
is relatively low, and financial assistance is considerable. They 
have beautiful prairies, but some of them approach the ozone 
pollution of Los Angeles because of cavalier implementation of air 
pollution laws in the rush to develop as much oil, gas and mining as 
quickly as they can.

They are the smallest state in population and geographically so large 
that some of the remote areas are designated not rural but frontier.

They have some of the most beautiful national parks and some of the 
worst wind. Each winter, the main highway south to Colorado is 
frequently closed because of extreme weather. In my field, 
information technology, we often complained that the hardest 
challenge in working there was the time zone difference. You had to 
set your clocks back 20 years when you crossed the border from 
Colorado. Not always a joke, as when I first worked there, I 
encountered technology configuration that had actually been 
superseded 20 years earlier.

Here we have adjacent states with huge differences in issues with law 
and drugs. Without intending any insult to my former colleagues in 
Wyoming whom I respected and whose company I enjoyed, Colorado is 
progressive and Wyoming is clueless in this respect.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom