PERSPECTIVE: Congress considers legalizing pot, repeating Colorado’s ‘big mistake’ | Denver-gazette

April began with federal marijuana legalization passing the U.S. House of Representatives, and activists are pressing Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring it to a vote in the Senate ASAP. They want federal legalization before Democrats potentially lose control of Congress in November’s mid-term elections.

The House passed the MORE Act on April 1 by a 220-204 voice vote. If the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act becomes law, though it faces an uphill Senate battle, states will have sole responsibility for a drug Congress first regulated in 1937.

Critics of legalization want the Senate to study Colorado — North America’s most drug-lenient jurisdiction. They describe an insidious THC crisis the media and the public don’t see. Pot-industry advocates claim legalization works in Colorado.

With or without MORE, 18 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the drug for recreational use and an additional 18 for medicinal use. Without federal obstruction, marijuana becomes a classic experiment for the laboratory of states.

Colorado became the country’s most robust pot lab when voters approved Amendment 64 in 2012, the day Washington state legalized with Initiative 502.

As the only state with a constitutional right to marijuana, with provisions for nearly unbridled THC commerce, Colorado went all in. The law protects the possession, consumption, cultivation, manufacture, transport, and sale of pot against substantial disruption by the state.

The arguments in favor remain: Legalization would erode the black market — no more seedy drug deals — and provide tax revenue for much-needed services. But legalization tracks with sordid and dramatic changes in Colorado, giving some undecideds pause.

Legalization coincides with a steady and visible rise in homelessness, hard-drug overdoses, mental health problems, and the proliferation of rehabilitation centers. A former fun center in my family’s mountain village — a place of bowling, pinball, pizza, and eight-ball — became an indoor marijuana farm and a “medicinal” retail dispensary. An upscale mountain resort transitioned to a rehab center, as did a sprawling Ramada Inn. Correlation is certain, while cause remains an informed opinion shared by much of the community.

Legalization caused a race for profits resembling the 19th-century gold rush. By 2020, 572 recreational and 438 medical stores peppered strip malls and main streets. Pot shops outnumber Starbucks by more than 800 stores.

As of 2021, Colorado’s marijuana industry employed 35,500. Tax proceeds exceeded $2 billion within about five years.

But that revenue rush comes with social and economic consequences.

“Colorado has seen increases in marijuana-related hospitalizations, Emergency Room visits, poison control calls, DUIs, and fatal crashes where drivers tested positive for cannabinoids,” explains a 2021 report by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, which analyzes the experiment every other year.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers urges the Senate to avoid Colorado’s “big mistake.” A former district attorney, U.S. attorney, Colorado attorney general, and director of the state’s prison system, Suthers studies the negative effects of Amendment 64. He testified in recent months before three state legislatures pursuing legalization.

“Big Marijuana has done a con job on the states. Now, they’re taking it to Congress because they want more profits,” Suthers said. “The industry has done a marvelous job convincing states how well this is working in Colorado. I’ve seen all the promises that were made, and none have come true.”

Promises included a reduction of black-market sales, a windfall of school cash, and an improvement in the racial imbalance in policing.

“The total number of marijuana arrests in Colorado has dropped since legalization, although the arrest rate for black people remained disproportionately high,” said the state’s 2021 report.

Despite a variety of disappointing outcomes, recreational sales have generated funds for the state, schools, and municipalities. Suthers argues that spreadsheets don’t tell the full story.

“The vast majority of the money raised goes to regulation, police dealing with illegal grows, homelessness, impaired driving, and a litany of other problems made worse by recreational marijuana,” Suthers said. “A small amount goes to school construction, but not nearly what was promised.”

Leading a city that owns its public utility, the mayor complains of Big Marijuana squandering scarce water, energy, and space.

“All they tell us is how much the state is making,” the mayor said. “It’s a pittance compared to the social and environmental damage.”

Suthers oversees Colorado’s second-largest police department, which handles marijuana problems each day. He sees the pot industry consuming commercial properties and exacerbating a housing shortage young consumers cannot afford. A recent study by OJO Labs found that Denver’s apartments and houses cost more than those in New York City and all but four other major U.S. cities. Housing costs in Colorado Springs are catching up and consistently setting new record highs.

Colorado allows any household to grow up to 12 plants, but law enforcement struggles to detect illicit operations that consume entire homes and far exceed the limit. People in need of shelter compete for high-profit marijuana operations that can pay higher rents and mortgages than average wage earners.

“The DEA tells us Colorado’s black market is larger than the regulated market,” Suthers said.

He knows why.

“The smell of marijuana is so common it is no longer probable cause. It cannot be, as anyone is allowed to grow 12 plants,” Suthers said. “If someone calls about an illegal operation, saying my neighbor’s house smells like pot, dispatch says, ‘Call back if you have more evidence.’ There’s not much we can do.”

“As such, we have foreign cartels leasing barns and warehouses, buying homes, growing thousands of plants. Ironically, Colorado’s black market exports marijuana to Mexico.”

The state’s latest report says “law enforcement agencies continue to combat illicit market activity. Because of the nature of this type of activity being inherently hidden … it remains challenging to quantify the size of the illicit market.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration reports seizing a record-breaking 57,711 indoor plants from Colorado’s illegal grow operations in 2018 and 2019. Suthers believes that only scratches the surface.

As a supervisor for two Colorado National Forest properties, Dave Condit accompanied Forest Service officers on the helicopter raid of a Mexican cartel hidden west of Colorado Springs in 2018. They hovered over dozens of cartel operations hiding in the vast Rocky Mountains.

“These are massive, supported plantations, with massive amounts of irrigation,” Condit said at the time, in a meeting with The Gazette’s editorial board. “The cartels create their own little reservoirs for water. These operations are guarded with armed processors. They have little buildings on site.”

Condit said the cartel invasion had grown so large the entire budget for the Pike-San Isabel National Forests would not cover the costs of removing cartel operations within them. Suthers said the federal government hasn’t dented the plantations.

“You’ve got facilities and structures that have to be deconstructed,” Condit said. “We would need to bring in air support to get materials out of there.”

Suthers claims the deep pockets of “Big Marijuana” fund political campaigns and makes regulation of THC potency politically impossible. Data show a net increase in adult marijuana use nationwide, but the rise in “heavy use” concerns him the most.

“In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, people smoked pot with a THC content of 2%-3%,” Suthers said. “Now, it’s 20%-50% and up. Marijuana dabs are up to 100%. It has led to a dramatic increase in heavy users. Nationwide, since legalization began here, heavy use has gone from 3 million to 8 million people.”

He suggests the Senate demand scientific research into high-concentrate THC.

“What does it mean for productivity?” Suthers asked. “You cannot get disability for being a drug addict, but as much as one-third of the disability roles cover people so dependent on drugs they cannot work because of mood and personality disorders, and other conditions that are covered. Heavy users are often too high to be constructive.”

Suthers faces an uphill battle with most of his home state’s congressional delegation. Both of Colorado’s Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, support legalization.

Hickenlooper was Colorado’s governor when it began. Bennet sponsored the Marijuana Justice Act in 2019, calling it “the most far-reaching marijuana legislation ever to be introduced in Congress.” It was needed, Bennet’s website explains, to reverse “drug policy that has disproportionately affected low-income communities and communities of color.”

Dr. Kevin Cuccinelli, brother to the former acting deputy secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, works as an emergency physician in metropolitan Denver. He and others in the field say legalization caused immediate problems for emergency rooms.

“What I saw most was called cannabis hyperemesis syndrome, a subset of cyclic vomiting syndrome,” Cuccinelli said. “There is evidence that marijuana causes schizophrenia. If you have a positive family history, chronic use may increase your chances of developing schizophrenia.”

Suthers calls pot legalization a gateway policy with deadly results.

“It led our legislators to think it’s OK to decriminalize all drugs. Once you tie drug use to government revenues, politicians want more,” Suthers said. “We pass laws that encourage early age drug use, then we are shocked, shocked, shocked that we have serious drug use across the board.”

A bipartisan state bill in 2019 — written by Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Shane Sandridge — reduced to misdemeanor status the possession of 4 grams of federally classified Schedule 1 and 2 narcotics. Instead of handcuffs, suspects caught with heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and other hard drugs get citations and minor charges.

Four grams of fentanyl, a Schedule 2 drug and a Colorado misdemeanor, can kill 2,000 or more individuals. A 1-year-old Colorado girl died recently from accidentally ingesting a trace of fentanyl so small the human eye would barely detect it.

Colorado-based economist Tim Reichert and a team of researchers devised an equation measuring the link between the 2019 law and the state’s fentanyl crisis. He determined the new law had led to 700 additional fentanyl deaths, as of April, that could have been avoided with arrests.

Overall, Colorado’s fentanyl deaths have increased 529% since 2019 — the country’s largest increase aside from Alaska. After correcting for Alaska’s low overdose base rate among a small population, Colorado has the country’s highest rate of increase in fentanyl deaths. If the MORE Act passes, Suthers anticipates an exacerbation of drug problems nationwide. After all, he believes Colorado’s deadly crisis began with legalizing pot.

“Big Tobacco threw around tons of money for years,” Suthers said. “Big Marijuana makes Big Tobacco look like amateurs. In 15 years, when the health impacts of high-potency marijuana are known, we’ll see the trial lawyers making a fortune suing Big Marijuana. They’ll say, ‘You knew it was dangerous, but you hid it.’ Just like Big Tobacco.”

This article, by Gazette Editorial Pages Editor Wayne Laugesen, originally appeared in The Washington Examiner.