Pubdate: Mon, 22 Feb 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 COLO., A LOOK AT LIFE AFTER MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION

DENVER - Nestled between a 7-Eleven and a store selling Broncos 
jerseys, the door to the generic-looking retail establishment is easy 
to miss. But once inside, the smell is unmistakable.

At Euflora, tables are filled with glass containers of marijuana next 
to interactive tablets describing each strain ("sweet floral aroma," 
"intoxicatingly potent"). An array of marijuana-infused products 
beckon behind locked cases: from energy shots to sour gummies, 
brownies to bacon brittle. And if you're 21 or older, it's all legal to buy.

This is Colorado, where a billion-dollar-a-year legal marijuana 
industry has emerged since January 2014. It offers an early look at 
what Massachusetts could face should voters greenlight an expected 
ballot question and legalize the drug this fall.

So has legalization been a plus or a minus?

"Yes," Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman replied with a laugh.

The consensus among several top state officials - who emphasize that 
their job is to carry out the will of the voters rather than mull 
whether their constituents made the right choice - is that there have 
been no widely felt negative effects on the state since marijuana 
became legal, and a crop of retail stores, cultivation facilities, 
and manufacturers sprung up from Aurora to Telluride.

Legalization has ushered in thousands of new jobs in the burgeoning 
industry, brought $135 million into state coffers last year, and 
ended the prohibition of a widely used substance.

But police say they struggle to enforce a patchwork of laws covering 
marijuana, including drugged driving. Officials fret about the 
industry becoming like big tobacco, dodging regulation and luring 
users with slick advertising. And this state, long a leader in 
cannabis use, has the highest youth rate of marijuana use in the 
nation, according to the most recent data available from a federal 
drug-use survey.

Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment in November 2012 
legalizing the sale of recreational marijuana, which began in 2014.

The drug is heavily regulated. Each plant for sale must be tagged 
with a radio frequency identification chip, from an early stage of 
its life to sale, to help the state track it. Marijuana, both in 
plant form and infused in products, is required to be tested for 
potency and contaminants, and sold in child-resistant containers.

Tourists and locals alike can buy recreational marijuana as long as 
they are at least 21 and can possess up to 1 ounce. Only those with a 
medical marijuana "red card," issued by the state on the 
recommendation of a physician, can possess more at one time.

While the popular image of marijuana use remains joints and 
vaporizers, a significant percentage of marijuana sales in Colorado - 
nearly half according to some estimates - take the form of infused 
products, such as edible treats, pills, drops, bath soak, and even 
"sensual enhancement oil."

More than two years into the still-rapidly growing industry, how do 
top officials and their constituents see legalization?

"There are a certain number of folks, like myself, who were pretty 
reticent about it to begin with," said House Speaker Dickey Lee 
Hullinghorst, a Democrat. But "the sky didn't fall. Everything seems 
to be working pretty well."

That's in line with the view of Colorado voters, according to a 
November 2015 survey. The poll found 53 percent believe legalizing 
marijuana has been good for the state, while 39 percent believe it 
has been bad.

And Dr. Larry Wolk, the top medical official in Colorado's public 
health department, said that since legalization no large troubling 
public health trends have cropped up yet. But he noted sporadic 
reports of impaired driving and people getting violently ill from 
ingesting too much marijuana in edibles, such as candy bars.

He said this month new data indicate that the biggest increases in 
marijuana hospitalizations have been seen among out-of-staters, who 
might be naive about the drug's effects.

All marijuana, including medical, is subject to standard state and 
local sales tax in Colorado. But recreational marijuana is also 
subject to an additional 10 percent special state tax, along with 
additional local marijuana taxes. And there's also a 15 percent 
excise tax on wholesale transfers of recreational marijuana, that 
ends up raising retail prices.

For producers, the tax picture is among the many complexities of 
running a marijuana business.

Sally Vander Veer, president of one of the state's largest 
dispensaries and cultivation operations, which has 70 employees and a 
payroll of about $3.8 million a year, is bullish on her rapidly 
expanding business. Medicine Man has a 40 percent profit margin, she 
said. But her company struggles with what she estimates to be an 
effective tax rate of nearly 50 percent, as well as having to deal 
almost exclusively in cash. Because marijuana remains illegal under 
federal law, access to banking services is severely restricted.

The state saw $135 million in tax and fee revenue last year from the 
recreational and medical marijuana industry, money that has gone to, 
among other efforts, education for youth and law enforcement on the drug.

State Representative Jonathan Singer, a leader on marijuana issues in 
the House, said what legalization has done is "allowed marijuana to 
pay its own way," with the cost of regulation paid for by 
dispensaries and consumers.

Yet law enforcement officials offer a more negative, chaotic view. 
They paint a picture of a quickly evolving array of laws, 
regulations, and ordinances that outpace their enforcement tools for 
related issues, such as drugged driving.

For one, they say, there's no quick, reliable check to see whether 
drivers are too high to operate a vehicle safely, as there is for 
blood-alcohol level. And there's no easy way to determine whether 
food products in a vehicle are infused with pot.

"You have no ability to test the gummy bear laying there on the 
dashboard," said Chief John Jackson of the Greenwood Village, Colo., 
Police Department said.

"Edibles pose a problem because there is no way to tell the potency 
of it, there is no way to test it in the field. And no law 
enforcement officer is going to lick it and say, 'Well, there's 
marijuana, THC in that.' " (THC is the primary psychoactive compound 
in marijuana.)

Jackson, former president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of 
Police, and other police officials said legalization simply moved 
much faster than law enforcement officers' ability to keep up with it.

Jackson, who sounded beleaguered in an interview, said a fallacy of 
legalization is that it would give law enforcement time back to focus 
on more serious, complicated criminal issues and bigger drug problems.

Two years and two months into full legalization, he said, "we're not 
seeing that."

Another problem with edible marijuana products, said Dr. Michael 
DiStefano, who directs emergency medicine clinical operations at 
Colorado's only top-level pediatric trauma center: the inability of 
kids to distinguish between normal products and those infused with THC.

When marijuana is "handled responsibly, it's not an issue for 
children's health. The problem is a lot of these edibles," he said. 
"They look like regular candy. . . . There's no way to discern what 
is an edible gummy bear that has THC in it, versus a regular gummy 
bear. In fact, you cannot distinguish them unless they're in the package."

He said he's seen an uptick in kids admitted to the ER at Children's 
Hospital Colorado - to about 15 last year - ill from accidentally 
ingesting edible marijuana-infused foods since the drug became legal 
for recreational use in January 2014.

Indeed, the most grinding concerns and the biggest question marks 
focus on kids and young adults. But the effects of legalization on 
children remain effectively unknown with about two years of 
experience and lagging statistics.

Opponents of legalization point to a federal drug survey that 
estimates Colorado had the highest level of any state of 12- to 
17-year-olds reporting marijuana use in the last 30 days for 
2013-2014. But the change in Colorado's youth use rate from 2012-2013 
- - before full legalization-to 2013-2014 - partly after - was not 
statistically significant. And federal statisticians say the findings 
are not sufficient to draw conclusions about changes in youth 
marijuana use patterns as a result of legalization.

Wolk, the top doctor at the state's public health department, said 
Colorado marijuana use has always been high compared with the rest of 
the country.

"No pun intended," he said, "we started high and stayed high - use 
hasn't increased in a statistically significant way since 
legalization. Those that were using before are still using now, among 
youths and adults."

For some opponents, a big concern isn't just what has happened so 
far, but what's yet to come. They worry that the burgeoning marijuana 
industry, like alcohol and tobacco before it, could eventually use 
its profits to gain clout and subvert attempts at regulation.

Jeffrey Zinsmeister, executive vice president of Smart Approaches to 
Marijuana, a national nonprofit group cofounded by former US 
representative Patrick Kennedy that opposes legalization and 
commercialization of marijuana, said there have been several red flags.

"You're seeing this headlong rush into another addictive industry 
without knowing what widespread marijuana use is going to do to 
society," he warned. "And the signs from Colorado are not good."

Officials say their primary concerns include: adults being able to 
legally consume the drug normalizes it for kids; Joe Camel-like ads 
that make pot smoking seem appealing to kids; and legalization 
increasing availability, thus making the barrier to getting marijuana lower.

"I worry about normalization, I worry about commercialization, and I 
worry about availability," said Andrew Freedman, who directs Governor 
John Hickenlooper's Office of Marijuana Coordination.

"What happens to people over the long term, especially kids over the 
long term, as they see marijuana normalized, as they see people 
advertising for marijuana, and as accessibility becomes greater and 
greater?" he asked. "Kids who are, right now, saying, 'No thanks,' 
will that change over time?"

Freedman and other people deeply involved in the day-to-day oversight 
of the new market say it functions pretty smoothly. But they 
emphasize the broader question of whether or not legalization ends up 
a success will probably take five or 10 years to answer fully.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom