"Councilman Don Knight told News 5 last month as the council voted for the ban that he didn't think the city was responsible for providing marijuana users a place to light up." Paging earth to Don Knight! No one requested the city to provide places for users to light up. That entire initiative was brought through private enterprise by citizens of our city. No city funding or interference is required. Robert Wheeler Colorado Springs [end]
By legalizing "recreational" marijuana in 2012, Colorado challenged marijuana policy, not just for the United States but for the world. Even earlier, Colorado legalized "medical marijuana," with a full blown commercial industry beginning in 2009. Today, three years into fully legal marijuana, it is time to ask, "How's that working out?" While there is dispute over just about everything related to marijuana in Colorado, three facts stand out. First the advent of legal marijuana did not eliminate the illegal market for marijuana. Illegal marijuana is cheaper than legal marijuana because of the taxes paid and the regulations required for the legal product. [continues 355 words]
President Barack Obama's National Drug Control Strategy in 2010 first proclaimed the major policy goals of the administration's approach to the drug problem and the goals were to be met by 2015. Not only have they not been met, in critical instances, the policies have been going in the wrong direction, rapidly. We learned last week that, in the midst of the opiate overdose crisis, heroin overdose deaths rose an additional 28 percent between 2013 and 2014. That's on top of the 340 percent rise in heroin deaths since 2007, such that beyond the 8,217 deaths of 2013, we now have another 10,574. That is, we now see a 440 percent increase from the Bush years. [continues 948 words]
Pot legalization is a disaster for Colorado children and schools. Listen to the experts who live it every day. The crisis of pot-infested schools was identified by Colorado educators last week as the No. 1 issue they face. They shared their concerns and frustrations as more than 350 school officials, first responders and school mental health professionals met Wednesday and Thursday in Thornton for the Colorado School Safety Resource Center's Safe Schools Summit. "We got sold that marijuana legalization was going to positively impact our schools," said Christine Harms, director of the Colorado School Safety Resource Center, as quoted in The Denver Post. "And there is the school infrastructure aspect, but we're not seeing tremendous changes with marijuana prevention programs, and our students are paying the price." [continues 432 words]
A marijuana social club that opened Friday amid questions over the legality of such venues - and a citywide moratorium on new ones - has been shut down for reasons completely unrelated to marijuana. Fire investigators went to One Love Club, on 21st Street between Highway 24 and Colorado Avenue in Colorado Springs, before it opened to tell the owner the club needed permits it didn't have in order to open, Fire Marshal Brett Lacey said Saturday. But the club opened anyway, and at 10 p.m. Friday the Colorado Springs Fire Department shut it down and kicked everyone out. [continues 568 words]
A poll sponsored by the Community Alliances for Drug Free Youth shows that slightly more than half of Coloradans are now opposed to marijuana legalization. According to a release from SmithJohnson Research, 51 percent of 600 likely voters in Colorado said they would vote against marijuana legalization if it came up today. The poll, which was conducted over the phone with self-identified 2012 voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The survey results show a change in mood in the years since Amendment 64 was on the ballot when 55 percent of Colorado voters supported legalizing recreational marijuana sales to adults over the age of 21. [continues 216 words]
Dr. Nora Volkow represents a lot of inconvenient truths about marijuana that just don't square with industry claims and popular opinion that the drug is medicine, "safer than alcohol" - or even on its way to being adequately regulated by states that have sanctioned its use. The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md., Volkow is one of the world's top experts on the use and abuse of cannabis and research of the drug's impacts on individual and public health. [continues 1450 words]
My deepest thanks to your editorial writers for the June 17 item entitled "Legalized pot hurting our children." The editorial should draw the attention of the hordes of misguided citizens who look upon marijuana as a sort of universal curative for whatever ails or inconveniences us. Apart from the increasing scientific evidence of the neurologic damage inflicted by marijuana upon our children, the confirmed teratologic and carcinogenic effects of marijuana upon our unborn children are not receiving the attention that is desperately needed. In our hedonistic pursuit of stuffing our bodies with this noxious substance, at what point if ever, will we begin to realize the long-term damage we are doing to future generations? Marvin O. Maul, DVM [end]
Colorado pot users have no fear of federal or local law enforcement. As of this week, they might start fearing the boss. The federal government lacks resources to enforce its laws against recreational or medical marijuana. It also lacks authority to require local or state police to enforce federal laws. But an employer can say no to drug-using employees, prohibiting them from using marijuana for any reason at any time. So says a ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court Monday, which sided unanimously with the employer in Coats v. Dish Network. [continues 441 words]
The dose makes the poison. - Paracelsus Millennials are the strongest advocates for legalizing marijuana, but they may be paving their own pathway to a problematic educational future through their political support. Photo - Students walk to and from classes on the campus quad of the University of Colorado, in Boulder, Colo., Monday April 20, 2015. The University of Colorado was open to the public on this 4/20 marijuana holiday for the first time in three years. The university has blocked public access in recent years in an effort to snuff mass smokeouts to mark the unofficial marijuana celebration. [continues 698 words]
The Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area reports 30 people were injured last year in 32 explosions involving hash oil production. It's a dangerous dilemma that seriously undermines well-intentioned beliefs that legalization would enhance public safety. On this topic, people who favor and oppose legalization should agree: Hash oil explosions must stop. Toward that end, a House committed voted 13-0 last week to establish felony charges for anyone suspected of using explosive gas to make hash oil in a residence. The bill would limit hash oil production to commercial operations, which are ostensibly easier to monitor and regulate. [continues 390 words]
Dr. Stuart Gitlow, a physician serving as president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, does not mince words: "There is no such thing at this point as medical marijuana," he said. It's a point he has made routinely for the past decade, as advocates for marijuana legalization have claimed the drug treats an array of serious illnesses, or the symptoms of illnesses, including cancer, depression, epilepsy, glaucoma and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Backing up Gitlow are the National Institute on Drug Abuse and practically every major medical association in the United States, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recently reaffirmed its stance. Cannabis in its various forms is an addictive drug that is especially dangerous to the developing brain - a linchpin the country's largest medical groups give for opposing its legalization. [continues 798 words]
Critics of Colorado's medical marijuana program say it's a fraud starting with the application process to get a red card, which allows a person to buy and use marijuana. Is getting on the state's Medical Marijuana Registry as easy as everyone says? The Gazette decided to see what the process involves. Applying for a red card was a little more involved than buying cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, but not much. The requirement of a doctor's examination and approval, for example, was as simple as having a quick cup of coffee with a stranger. [continues 673 words]
Colorado made headlines worldwide when recreational marijuana went on sale to the public in January 2014. News organizations descended on the Centennial State to document, and hype, the advent of legalized retail pot. The act of applying for and opening a retail pot business became reality-TV drama. MSNBC filmed a six-part documentary titled "Pot Barons of Colorado." There was great anticipation, and long lines, as pot shops opened for business, and a multimillion-dollar industry was born overnight. By early February 2015, 334 retail shops were selling pot to the public, based on state Department of Revenue data. [continues 3051 words]
Two families with deep Colorado roots - the Johnsons of Colorado Springs and the Haseldens of Centennial - have built rival commercial construction companies, each employing hundreds of people and reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. In business, they are practically sworn enemies. But there is at least one issue where the Haseldens and the Johnsons are in agreement and encourage key members of their staffs to collaborate: construction safety. It is of paramount importance, and all of their employees must be drug-free. [continues 1523 words]
Employers aren't the only ones drug testing these days. Parents are springing tests on their kids, who are smoking more marijuana since legalization. The owner of two labs in Colorado Springs reports seeing large increases in such tests. Amy Mullins, who owns two Any Lab Test Now franchises, says the number of drug tests conducted at her location near Chapel Hills Mall was up more than 22 percent in 2014 over the prior year. It was even higher at her south-side location: Testing was up 45 percent. [continues 752 words]
In January, a group of Colorado Springs pediatricians had an unusual topic on the agenda for one of their monthly meetings: Breastfeeding and babies who test positive for THC. "When that hits the agenda, it's clearly important," said Dr. Darvi Rahaman, a pediatrician at Peak Vista. "There's so many, so many good things about breastfeeding and its positive effects. When a child is born, we and the nursing staff promote breastfeeding. The question is what happens when we know Mom was positive on a THC screen? Do you recommend you breastfeed or not? What do you do?" [continues 681 words]
Much of the latest brain development science conducted around the world shares this bottom line: Adolescent substance use is harmful and a bigger deal than researchers previously thought. "Parents don't have to accept teen drug use or the notion that drug use is just a part of growing up," said Dr. Christian Thurstone, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, who also serves as medical director of one of Colorado's largest adolescent substance abuse treatment programs. [continues 999 words]
Nineteen-year-old Kaleb is 41 days and seven hours sober when he sits down for a long conversation about his marijuana addiction. Two more months, his treatment providers tell him, and he'll likely be able to deliver his first clean drug test in many years showing no presence of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis that produces a euphoric high and can affect the mind and body for weeks after use - especially if you're like Kaleb, who was getting high every day along with about 6 percent of American high school seniors. This according to the federally funded Monitoring the Future, one of the United States' most extensive and longest-running surveys of students' drug use and attitudes toward substances. [continues 2310 words]
Today concludes The Gazette's four-part perspective on the world's boldest public policy experiment with commercialized recreational and medical pot. The Gazette created a special project team made up of editorial staff and a seasoned reporter to look into these claims and compare them to information compiled after a year of legal recreational marijuana sales in Colorado. We wanted to examine whether claims of legalization are on a path to realization. We also looked for stories that have not been reported to create a clearer picture of the state of the industry. [continues 501 words]
