Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
As the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado, I am very familiar with the impact on Colorado and its people since marijuana was legalized with regulations and a special tax in 2012. We were told Colorado would lead the nation on a grand experiment in commercialized marijuana. Six years later - it’s a perfect time to pause and assess some results of that experiment.
Recent reports from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, from Denver Health, from Energy Associates, from the Colorado Department of Revenue and from the City of Denver should be enough to give everyone second thoughts about commercialized marijuana.
Consider these facts. Colorado’s youth use marijuana at a rate 85 percent higher than the national average. Marijuana-related traffic fatalities are up by 151 percent. Of the over 400 licensed pot shops surveyed, 70 percent recommend pregnant women use marijuana to treat morning sickness. An indoor marijuana plant grower consumes 17 times more power per square foot than an average residence. Each of the approximately one million adult marijuana plants grown by licensed growers in Colorado consumes over 2.2 liters of water — per day. Colorado has issued over 40 little-publicized recalls of retail marijuana laced with pesticides and mold.
Colorado’s tax revenue from commercialized marijuana adds less than one percent to Colorado’s coffers, which is more than washed out by the public health, public safety, and regulatory costs of commercialization, and no significant part of the tax has gone to help our schools — as promised by the promoters as a result of the marijuana tax.
Although the marijuana industry trumpeted a promised decrease in alcohol use, Colorado’s alcohol consumption has steadily climbed since marijuana commercialization. The youth in Colorado are being targeted by the marijuana industry which is selling marijuana-consumption devices that avoid detection at schools, like vape pens made to look like highlighters and eyeliner.
These are the same marijuana marketers that are promoting higher and higher potency marijuana gummy candy, marijuana suppositories and marijuana “intimate creams.” This aggressive marketing makes perfect sense in addiction industries like tobacco, alcohol, opioids and marijuana. These industries make the vast majority of their profits from heavy users, and so they strive to create and maintain this user market. Especially when users are young and their brains are most vulnerable to addiction.
I doubt the 55 percent of Coloradans who voted for marijuana commercialization in 2012 thought they were voting for all this. We should have provided more information to educate our voters. I wish more people in Colorado had considered the many problems we are now experiencing.
Bob Troyer
U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado
