Pubdate: Sun, 26 Oct 2014
Source: Tampa Bay Times (FL)
Page: P1
Copyright: 2014 St. Petersburg Times
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Website: http://www.tampabay.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Author: Alex Leary, Times Washington Bureau Chief

THE COLORADO EXPERIMENT

Marijuana Is Legal in Colorado for Recreational and Medicinal Purposes;
Everything Seems Surprisingly Normal

DENVER - Drive around here for a few days and you can't shake it: Is
the smell real or in my head?

Get within 20 yards of one of the hundreds of marijuana dispensaries
or warehouses where the stuff is grown and there's nothing imaginary.
Heady vapors are sweeping through the Mile High City.

Inside the shops, which outnumber Starbucks, comically named varieties
are lined up in glass jars. Green Crack. Super Skunk. AK-47. Golden
Goat. Trainwreck. But the action is with cannabis-infused 'edibles' -
chocolate bars, cookies, sodas and gummy bears that pack a longer,
all-overbody buzz.

Baklava, anyone?

Retail stores are popping up everywhere, filling vacant spaces,
creating jobs and work for general contractors. Warehouses are nearly
impossible to rent. Tourism is up, crime is not. And 10 tons - tons -
of weed is being consumed per month.

'This is the new gold rush,' said Jaron Finn, 23, who manages Cannabis
Station, a downtown shop.

Nearly 11 months after Coloradans became the first in the country to
legally purchase marijuana for recreational use, seeing the rush in
action is wild and yetnormal. The city has not collapsed into a
hedonistic haze and the stores have blended in with 7-Elevens, Subways
and used car lots.

Denver has largely shrugged in acceptance.

'You've got suburban housewives. Businessmen coming out of their
Mercedes coupes. Young, old. And obviously the stereotypical stoners,'
said Matthew Fuerst, who can see the traffic from the brewery he just
opened on South Broadway, a street so populated with dispensaries that
it's called The Green Mile or Broadsterdam. 'In any case, it's
something that appeals to a wide base of people. The shock value is
gone.' Craig Curtis, 50, can smell the marijuana from his home two
blocks away. He voted against recreational use and doubts the economic
benefits will be as great as stated but conceded, 'So far it doesn't
really seem to have impacted us. You just hope society as a whole
knows where it's headed.' The Colorado experiment, which is being
duplicated in Washington state, serves as a backdrop as voters in
other states consider marijuana this election. In Florida, medical use
is on the Nov. 4 ballot. In Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C.,
voters will decide whether to expand to recreational use.

While Florida's initiative looks iffy due to a 60 percent threshold,
the other measures are likely to pass, propelling the country down
what appears an inevitable path. Public support for legalizing
marijuana use is at an alltime high of 54 percent, according to a
national Pew poll.

'Of course, it concerns us,' said Calvina Fay, executive director of
Drug Free America Foundation, a St. Petersburg-based organization
started by the Sembler family. She argues that once a state goes for
medical marijuana as Colorado did in 2000, advocates begin plotting
full legalization. 'This has not occurred without some significant
negative side effects, as voiced by the governor.' Colorado Gov. John
Hickenlooper, locked in a tight re-election campaign, recently said
that voters were 'reckless' for opening the door to recreational
marijuana, available to anyone over 21, including out-of-state
visitors. The Democrat cautions other states to see what happens in
Colorado before following his state's lead. Indeed, proponents and
detractors can find evidence to support their argument.

For all the whimsy that pot conjures, there have been serious
implications. A Denver man has been charged with murder for shooting
his wife after eating a pot-infused 'Karma Kandy.' A college student
died in March after jumping from a Denver hotel balcony; tests showed
he had eaten six times the recommended amount of a marijuana cookie.
Emergency room visits have increased with people facing adverse
reactions, mostly those who have tried the harmless-looking edibles.
Kids have accidentally eaten their parents' stash. Billboards around
the city ask parents to inspect Halloween candy.

Advocates scoff at what they view as isolated cases and largely, the
alarms that anti-pot advocates sounded have been unrealized. But even
some users fret about downsides. 'When you're numbing out the bad,
you're numbing out the good,' said Heather, 39, who did not want her
last named used for fear of repercussions at work. She was leaving a
shop on Broadway after paying $38 for a quarter ounce of Kushberry.
'Any time you make something more accessible and less stigmatized,
then people just fall right into that,' Heather said. 'You're giving
everyone the option to say, 'It's okay.' ' The industry is moving to
head off bad publicity. Customers are being given cards that outline
the safe use of edibles and one company has begun marketing 'rookie
cookies' with 10 milligrams of THC, the psychoactive substance. (The
maximum for recreational products is 100 milligrams; on the medical
side the level can skyrocket.) To class up the brand, merchants like
to call their wares 'cannabis,' instead of weed or pot or dope, even
as they dish out Death Star and Super Silver Sour Diesel Haze.

'A lot of the propaganda was used to condition people into thinking
cannabis is bad so they put bad names on it,' said Thomas Behler,
manager of Ganja Gourmet. An affable 44-year-old with short hair and
square glasses, he still fits the stereotype, dressed in a tiedye
shirt, sweatpants and neon green Pumas. He proselytized the drug as a
wonder substance. 'It should be a regimen just like food and drink and
vitamins.' He did not appear to be joking.

The dispensary on South Broadway was once one of only a few but is now
one of many. The vibe can vary. At one store, a rough-looking guy with
SECURITY written on the back of his black shirt carried a gun on his
belt. But The Kind Room down the street looked like the waiting room
for any small business, save for the glass pipes for sale.

An employee, Terry Hobbs, said the average customer is older than 40.
'It's not for everybody. But it's also not dangerous,' said Hobbs, who
has seen business triple by expanding from medical to recreational.
The shop has added 10 jobs this year.

Hobbs listed common complaints in the industry, chiefly that banks are
refusing to do business, making for cash-only transactions that raise
risk of robbery. Armored vehicles are common sights outside
dispensaries. He bemoaned the higher taxes on recreational weed vs.
medical. For the latter, patients pay a 2.9 percent tax. Recreational
users pay that plus another 10 percent and merchants pass on a 15
percent excise tax. For that reason, some users are still seeking
doctors' permission for medical marijuana, hurting tax revenue and
raising ethical questions. Tax revenue on the recreational side alone
has hit $30 million from January through August of this year,
considerable but not as high as projections. A black market thrives
and adults can grow up to six plants at home.

But shops proliferate. Some try to look like Apple stores, glassy and
slick with uniformed employees guiding customers through selections
ordered on tablet computers. Other have embraced a happy medium
between black light stoner den and a professional business. Glossy
'lifestyle' magazines offer food recipes and product reviews ('A
single caramel is enough for a lasting body and mind effect without
being too much to stop your plans for the day') alongside pages of
eye-popping ads for weed, pipes and vaporizers.

'Everyone is in awe when they come in here, especially the Southern
people,' said Finn, manager of Cannabis Station, which sells hats and
clothing in addition to weed. He said tourists still look around as if
they are being set up. 'They get jittery. We tell them to take a deep
breath and it's going to be okay.' At a screen printing shop next
door, employees said they had noticed and welcomed the traffic but
groused that the shops have driven up rents and led to a rash of
public smoking, which is prohibited but not closely enforced. A number
of other business owners said they at least tolerated their new
neighbors and some reported improved sales.

The march to this point has been gradual. Colorado approved medial
marijuana in 2000 but shops did not open until 2007 due to court
wrangling. As acceptance grew and other states permitted medical use
or decriminalized possession, advocates began pushing for full
legalization. In a savvy move, they pitched Amendment 64 as a way to
regulate marijuana - bring it out in the open - and treat it like
alcohol. Taxes would help schools and the community, they said. Police
would be freed up to focus on more serious crimes. The measure passed
with 53 percent of the vote.

Legalization isn't minting waves of new pot smokers. A Quinnipiac poll
from July showed that 51 percent of Colorado voters have tried
marijuana but only 16 percent said they used it since it became legal
in January. The poll showed slightly less overall support for legal
marijuana, which critics say is evidence of buyer's remorse.
Politicians, however, are careful not to go against public opinion.
Both the Democrat and Republican in the state's heated U.S. Senate
race kept clear in a recent debate of talk of reversing full
legalization.

'The founders intended the states to be laboratories of democracy and
Colorado is deep in the heart of the laboratory,' Republican Cory
Gardner said in an interview. 'We've seen some bad things but we've
seen some good things.' He cited the story of a Missouri man who moved
to Colorado so his epileptic daughter could get access to 'Charlotte's
Web,' a non-euphoric strain.

The Florida Legislature authorized Charlotte's Web in the spring, and
Gov. Rick Scott signed it into law, yet most Republicans remain
opposed to the ballot measure, which would grant broader use of
marijuana without restrictions on THC.

Critics say it could lead to shops on every corner, not unlike Denver,
and attack the ease in which people have gotten medical clearance to
use the drug. (Left unsaid is that the Legislature would write the
regulations, as strict as desired.) Proponents can point to examples
like that of Macie Owens. The demure, curly-haired 24year-old walked
into a Broadway Street dispensary on a rainy Sunday and paid $35 for a
type of wax that is laden with THC.

Owens, who lives in Denver and has lupus, said she was once on eight
pharmaceuticals. 'It took more out of me than the disease itself.'
With marijuana, she said her appetite has improved and she's not in
the kind of pain that kept her from working.

Jake Howard also likes it for the pain of repeated falls off his BMX
bike. But he doesn't have a medical card. When he turned 21, one of
the first things he did was visit a dispensary.

'After growing up buying marijuana from your buddy down the street
.. this is amazing,' he said, holding two green plastic containers
of bud and a prerolled joint. 'It was weird at first, but once you go
in there a few times, it's normal. It's mellowed out Denver a lot.'
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MAP posted-by: Richard