Pubdate: Tue, 27 May 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Jenny Deam

COLORADO POT DOESN'T STAY PUT

Neighboring States See an Uptick in Drug Arrests As Marijuana Flows 
Illegally Across Their Borders.

SIDNEY, Neb. - Sheriff John Jenson watched the 2012 election returns 
crawling across his TV screen in this rural area just over the 
Colorado border. Tuned to a Denver news station, he soon realized 
Colorado voters were about to legalize recreational marijuana.

That's when he turned to his wife and started to swear.

"I felt just sick," he remembers. "The drug war in this country used 
to be along the U.S.-Mexican border. Now it's eight miles away."

Although legalization continues to be celebrated within Colorado, its 
nextdoor neighbors are none too pleased. In fact, many are furious.

Law enforcement officers in the smaller, often isolated counties in 
states ringing Colorado say their departments shudder under the 
weight of Colorado pot flowing illegally across the border. Drug 
arrests are rising, straining already strapped budgets in places 
where marijuana remains illegal.

"It has just devastated these smaller agencies," says Tom Gorman, 
director of the federally funded Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug 
Trafficking Area program, a network of law enforcement organizations 
in four Western states. "The marijuana laws [in Colorado] were 
supposed to eliminate the black market. But in effect they have 
become the black market."

A study by his organization last year found that between 2005 and 
2012, the amount of seized Colorado pot heading for other states 
increased 400%. Although it is legal for adults to possess small 
amounts of marijuana in Colorado, it remains against the law to take 
it out of the state.

But most agree it's fantasy to think that won't happen.

Nowhere is that more apparent than along Nebraska's panhandle, a 
rolling land of cows, corn and wind where entrance to the state is 
marked only by a welcome sign on a lonely stretch of highway.

"There's about a dozen back roads into my county from Colorado. I've 
got eight deputies. Even if I had every one of them take a road and 
sit on it day and night, there are still four roads left," says 
Jenson, the Cheyenne County sheriff. He is so angry that he has not 
set foot in Colorado for two years.

Here in the deep red heart of a red state, many view the shift in 
tolerance toward marijuana with disdain.

"They passed a law and didn't give a second thought to how it would 
impact surrounding states," Jenson fumes. "If they want Colorado to 
be the High State and live up to all of those John Denver songs, they 
can keep it in their four walls. I don't need Colorado's problems in Nebraska."

In Sidney, Police Chief B.J. Wilkinson says he has made 50 
marijuana-related arrests this year - a 20% increase over the same 
time last year. "In a town of 6,900, that's quite a few."

The quiet county seat is perhaps best known locally as headquarters 
of the Cabela's sporting and hunting goods chain.

"We've always had people who used marijuana, and we pretty much knew 
who they were. The difference now is availability. We are finding 
people we never would have suspected have become recreational users. 
You walk by people on the street and can smell it. You can smell it 
in the aisles of Wal-Mart," Wilkinson said.

There has also been an uptick in property crime, which Wilkinson 
thinks is because thefts are financing marijuana buys across the state line.

Jenson says county jail numbers are "through the roof." In 2009, 15 
people were jailed for marijuana-related charges. In 2013, there were 62.

Nearby Deuel County, population 2,000, stopped putting prisoners in 
its antiquated basement jail years ago. Now, it's an evidence room 
full of confiscated marijuana, nearly all of which comes from cars 
leaving Colorado. These days, about 1 in 7 traffic stops yields some 
kind of drug activity, says Deuel County Sheriff Adam Hayward.

"We should sell it back to Colorado," he says with a sigh.

Deuel County authorities made about 35 felony marijuana arrests in 
2013. This year, in under five months, there have been 27, Hayward 
says. A first-time possession offense of an ounce or less is a civil 
citation and a $300 fine, but fees and penalties can rise quickly.

The county's cost for court-appointed lawyers has doubled in the last 
year, he says. And the number of driving-under-the-influence arrests 
involving marijuana has overtaken the number of those involving 
alcohol. With only four officers, Hayward's tiny department often 
feels under siege.

Last summer, four Minnesota teenagers were caught driving 86 mph 
through Deuel County. When a deputy pulled over the vehicle, he found 
about a pound of marijuana that had been purchased in Colorado. In a 
plea deal, the 16and 17-year-olds confessed that they had hung around 
dispensaries and asked people to make buys for them. They spent about 
$2,500, which they had hoped to turn into $6,000 in future sales back home.

"How do you fight that?" Hayward asks.

Colorado pot is now the weed of choice for many across the country, 
trumping the Mexican variety, he says. "Everybody tells us: We want 
the high-grade stuff coming out of Colorado."

The same story is playing out in other states that border Colorado.

"We're just one dog out here chasing many rabbits," agrees Marc 
Finley, undersheriff for Thomas County, Kan., not far from the 
Colorado state line. He too said the number of marijuana-impaired 
driving arrests had recently overtaken those involving alcohol in his county.

In New Mexico, San Juan County is about 15 miles from the Colorado 
line. Sheriff Ken Christesen says his deputies were being hit with a 
double whammy: pot coming north from Mexico and south from Colorado. 
"I don't think we have a good handle on it yet," he says. "We're just 
sitting back and watching all the trials and tribulations that 
Colorado is sorting through."

Not everyone sees the reefer routes as a big deal, however. Back in 
Sidney, Hailey Miller, a 23-year-old mother of two, wonders whether 
authorities are overreacting and whether the money spent on pot 
enforcement could be better spent elsewhere.

"I don't use [it] so it doesn't really affect me, but I don't see 
anything wrong with it," Miller says.

Chief Wilkinson has heard those sentiments before. He knows some 
people think legalization is a train that cannot be stopped and want 
Nebraska to get aboard. He concedes that stopping personal use is 
mostly impossible.

"I wish the only thing we had to worry about was marijuana use," he 
says. "If so, I wouldn't get so puckered up." But he thinks other 
drugs often follow marijuana use, and he worries that addictions hurt 
families in his little town. "That right there is a good enough 
reason to keep up the fight."
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