Does Colorado Want to Make Marijuana Illegal Again
Colorado governor won't rule out banning marijuana again. Here'due south why
Updated 2200 GMT (0600 HKT) April 20, 2018
Whether the two are connected is hotly debated -- and if they are, so what? For the first time publicly, Hickenlooper told CNN he doesn't rule out recriminalizing recreational marijuana, even if that's a long shot.
"Trust me, if the data was coming dorsum and we saw spikes in violent law-breaking, we saw spikes in overall law-breaking, in that location would be a lot of people looking for that bottle and figuring out how we get the genie back in," he said. "It doesn't seem likely to me, but I'm not ruling it out."
Data is now coming dorsum. In 2016, the state's crime rate was upward v% compared with 2013, while the national trend was downward. Violent criminal offence went upward 12.v% in the same time while the national increase was less than 5%. Merely Hickenlooper isn't withal prepare to pivot the blame on the legalization of weed -- a step he opposed just has since embraced as the option of his constituents.
"This is one of the dandy social experiments of the last 100 years. We have to all continue an open up mind," he said.
Conflicting interpretations
Denver, the land's capital and largest urban center, is home to the lion's share of Colorado's recreational marijuana dispensaries. It has more 170 of them -- more than than the number of Starbucks, McDonald'south and 7-Eleven stores combined.
Since 2013, Denver has seen its criminal offense spike, too; the 2016 crime rate increased 4%, with violent crime upwards 9%.
The Denver Police say the data is inconclusive.
"[Belongings crime is] the biggest commuter of our [overall] crime, and of our increases. Then, tin can yous aspect that to marijuana? I don't think you can," said Denver Police Commander James Henning. "The information isn't there."
The strength has added more officers to police the illicit weed market that Henning says continues to grow.
But, Henning said, there is enough of grayness area when it comes to cataloging crimes that may or may non have a nexus to marijuana -- legal or otherwise.
"If a marijuana clinic is burglarized, is that because information technology was a marijuana dispensary or ... if it were a liquor store or a stereo shop would it have been burglarized as well?" he said. "The data is so tough to nail down and say this offense happened considering of marijuana. It'due south just almost impossible to practise that."
Two years ago, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock blamed legal marijuana for drawing people to a pedestrian mall downtown where vehement incidents were happening. In one case, a transient swung a PVC pipe at people nearby. Police force did not classify that criminal offence as "marijuana related."
In Fort Collins, Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith is one of the few police enforcement leaders in the state to publicly blame legal marijuana for rising crime.
He doesn't claim that smoking a joint makes you more likely to rob a bank. The connection betwixt cannabis and crime is ofttimes indirect -- and not captured by official statistics, he said.
"Information technology's not a causal thing," he said, arguing instead that legal weed is attracting a growing seasonal transient population -- a population that he said is more than probable to commit criminal offence. "Every third inmate in the [Larimer County] jail is a transient and yous go past and ask them, and they'll tell you, we came here because of marijuana."
Smith -- a longtime opponent of legal weed who one time led a lawsuit against Colorado'due south legalization -- also said the theory that legalization would end the blackness market place in marijuana has not been borne out.
"That was 1 of the big promises [of legalizing marijuana] that if you regulated information technology, you would get rid of the bug that had traditionally been there with the illegal grows, simply it'due south been actually the opposite," he said.
Mason Tvert, a well-known pro-marijuana activist, sees things very differently, arguing it's irresponsible to even suggest there's a connection betwixt ascension crime and marijuana without difficult evidence to prove the link.
"The only story hither is that the evidence does not prove marijuana or marijuana legalization are to blame for this increase in offense," he said.
Did marijuana bring a killer to town?
Smith'southward frustration reached a humid point terminal summer when the body of 23-year-old Helena Hoffmann was pulled out of a lake in Fort Collins. Police said she had been raped and murdered walking home from an overnight shift at a nearby McDonald'southward. The man convicted in the case, Jeffrey Etheridge, is just the kind of person Smith is alert against.
Etheridge is a registered sex offender from Kentucky. From jail, he told CNN that he moved to Colorado in 2017 with his then-girlfriend because her brother worked at a marijuana dispensary. At the time of his arrest he was a transient, living out of his car in the park where Hoffmann'southward body was found. Etheridge pleaded guilty only now says he is innocent.
Hoffmann left behind a so-iv-yr-old girl named Mary, now existence raised by her begetter, Zach Denton.
"I think Mary looking at us, and she goes 'did my mom die?' and that's really when information technology set in," Denton said about the solar day he broke the news of Hoffmann'south death to his daughter.
He said Hoffmann would non want all homeless or transient people blamed for issues caused by just a few.
Denton thinks the bigger issue is that Etheridge, an out-of-state sexual practice offender, was able to register his overnight accost as Fort Collins' Metropolis Park, a identify that is supposed to close at 11 p.m. and attracts children who come up to play and swim.
From a demote in Metropolis Park built in remembrance of Hoffmann, Denton said there's a lot that could modify: sex offender laws, transient laws, or even the rules on park access at night. Any does change, he said, will exist Hoffmann'southward legacy.
In downtown Denver, the large -- and growing -- homeless population often gathers in Civic Heart Park, adjacent to the Statehouse.
The state'due south rate of homelessness rose 5.iii% from 2013 to 2017, according to data from the U.s.a. Section of Housing and Urban Evolution. Nationally, the charge per unit of homelessness dropped 8.6% in the same period.
Tom Luehrs, the executive director of Denver's St. Francis Center homeless shelter, said he sees many people who came to Colorado hoping to work in the legal marijuana industry, only to discover out it'south not that easy. Simply he said in that location is another, smaller, group of seasonal transient people who seem to prefer life on the streets to an flat and a task. While their presence predates marijuana legalization, information technology has increased since it became legal, he said.
"A lot of the people that we work with are wanting to get jobs, wanting to get housing, wanting to move out of homelessness, and then then you have this other group that's kind of fifty-fifty belligerent and certainly not engaging and sometimes merely very disrespectful. They don't care," Luehrs said.
Hickenlooper is skeptical that legal weed is to arraign for increasing the homeless population.
"Nosotros're trying to get information on information technology. That's a difficult one to measure out," he said.
The need for real information
The lack of solid evidence one way or some other weighs on Hickenlooper, who can betoken to other things that accept changed since legalization on January 1, 2014 -- like an economic hot streak -- without beingness able to say exactly what impact that has had.
"When y'all accept that kind of [economical] growth, you attract all kinds of people and a lot of them are unsavory. Do they come up for the marijuana? Or practise they come up because in that location are so many young people coming, in that location's a lot of coin in the community and this is a great place to try and rob somebody? Over again, more data. More data is the just way we're going to effigy this out," he said.
That was his advice to California lawmakers terminal yr ahead of that state's legalization of recreational marijuana.
"Spend the money to get a skilful baseline so that you lot tin help guide the discussions and the existent facts around this huge transformational shift in the way nosotros accost marijuana," he told CNN, explaining his bulletin to lawmakers.
Example in point: Colorado's traffic fatalities where the driver tested positive for the active course of THC known as Delta 9 more quadrupled from 18 in 2013 to 77 in 2016, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Just those numbers are likely very misleading, because, according to Hickenlooper, the state didn't often test for marijuana in fatal crashes prior to legalization.
"That's not real data," he said. "We didn't use to measure information technology and at present we're trying to measure something, so of course nosotros see a lot more."
If and when the information does come in -- from Colorado, from California and elsewhere -- information technology will be studied intensively. And if the haze clears and there are stiff signals that country legalization has hurt the community, Hickenlooper said Colorado'due south legal marijuana experiment may accept to finish.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/20/us/colorado-marijuana-and-crime/index.html
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