Pubdate: Sun, 07 Jul 2013
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Meredith C. Carroll

LOST ON POT? OK, SO MOVE ON AND FIX IT

I'll be the first to admit I don't like to lose. I'll be the first to 
admit it mostly because if I'm second to admit it, I'll have lost out 
on first place. Did I mention that I hate to lose? As such, I 
empathize with Gov. John Hickenlooper, who still has (non-marijuana) 
smoke coming out of his ears because he opposed Amendment 64, which 
voters passed last fall. I opposed it, too-not because I believe pot 
is on par with drugs such as cocaine or heroin, but because I didn't 
like the lack of a solid plan at the outset for regulating it like 
alcohol, especially as it applies to patrolling stoned drivers on the road.

Putting the cart before the horse, fueling the cart's tank with a 
mind-altering substance and hoping for the best seems like a strategy 
even my 4year-old would tell you is unwise- and she'll pick up 
anything brown she finds on the ground and pop it in her mouth in the 
off chance it's chocolate.

Still, I lost. I get it. Gov. Hickenlooper must get it, too, because 
he signed the bill into law. And yet, I'm not entirely sure he does. 
He's not alone, though.

A July 1 news story by The Associated Press addressed how 
policymakers are "confounded" by "marijuana's march toward 
mainstream." They're worried legalizing pot will make more young 
people prone to using it- even if the piece also cites that "barely 
one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year."

"Complications that could come with commercializing an addictive 
substance" was cited in the article as an additional concern. 
Somewhere, the alcohol and tobacco industries are sitting back, 
watching Colorado's cannabis chaos, giggling and warmly welcoming the 
pot purveyors to their world.

Looking at the mess we're in, I feel vaguely smug-even from the 
vantage point of a loser-since it seems as if most people seemed to 
think voting to decriminalize marijuana meant Colorado's fairy 
godmother would swoop in, wave her hemp wand and everyone would walk 
off into the sunset in a legally high state of bliss. But lamenting 
the growing and legitimate recognition of pot is about as productive 
as opponents of same-sex marriage wishing the Supreme Court would 
reverse its decision.

Colorado just released 60 pages of new marijuana rules that don't go 
into effect for another five months while the state is simultaneously 
dealing with the quagmire of a bungling medical marijuana regulatory 
agency- all while medical marijuana continues to be grown, packaged 
and sold as loosely as lettuce at a farmers' market. And yet, if you 
were to judge by the University of Colorado at Boulder-which is 
bizarrely patting itself on the back for spending only $107,794 to 
shut down the campus on 4/20 so that the party-proud school would not 
be disrupted late on a Saturday afternoon-you'd think pot's biggest 
problem was bad public relations.

At the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival late last month, Hickenlooper 
announced that his office would be spending several hundred thousand 
dollars on anti-pot TV ads in the coming months. This, despite the 
fact that the money would probably be more wisely spent elsewhere, 
considering that the Centers for Disease Control cites 443,000 people 
in the United States die annually from cigarette smoke and secondhand 
smoke, 80,000 from excessive alcohol use, and yet they don't have a 
single statistic or number related to annual deaths as a direct 
result of marijuana use.

There's no question kids need an education on the long-term health 
consequences of smoking dope. As with tobacco and alcohol, there can 
be a price to pay for passing the pot pipe at a young age. It's just 
time to stop mourning what could or should have been and get to work 
in earnest on a smart approach to all harmful substances-not just the 
ones that some folks in power have declared are more demonic than others.

Just as my husband reminds me frequently, I would gently remind our 
governor and legislators, too: Don't let winning go to your head or 
losing go to your heart. And don't beat a dead horse-especially one 
that's been involuntarily dragged around by a cart for far too long 
now. You're missing the point, and the boat.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom