CHAPTER-12

Have you have ever gone toe-to-toe with a teenager about weed? What about one who was raised by suckling the sweet milk of DPA talking points? If you have, what follows should be of particular interest. Not that this subject is just for teenagers to argue. I find that the extreme open-mindedness that exists in some circles of our society has led to these ideas being embraced by the crowd that is open to just about anything other than logic.

The professors and academic elites who love to comment from afar while looking down on the hoi polloi from their ivory towers also get into embracing The Lobby’s talking points. These guys are some of my favorite people to debate. While they sit back and tell us how it should all work well, very rarely have their opinions been influenced by real-life experiences. In theory, many ideas should work well, but in reality they don’t. These “experts” enjoy the freedom that comes by oversimplifying issues and twisting facts to fit their positions. While I can feel very sorry for the kids I debate with who are just pawns in The Industry’s game, the elites should know what they’re doing. As such, I have no problem squaring off with them in a debate.

The arguments are predictable and pretty simple. Americans seems to love simplicity when it comes to politics, but they are easily refuted if you are willing to engage. The arguments below have been used to justify a major shift in policy. They rationalize and protect an industry that is laughing all the way to the bank because others are making their points for them while they make all of the money.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) report is one of best sources of actual data you will find coming out of Colorado. Because I get into so many of these conversations, I actually carry around a copy of it, full of my notes, just about everywhere I go. When someone asks a question or drops some silly statistic I can reference the report and point to real data when answering. Much of the data that follows can be found in that report. I highly suggest downloading it before you start engaging in these conversations; it’s hard to argue with the actual numbers.

“It’s Not Addictive”

There is simply no arguing this fact: marijuana is addictive. Now, it is less addictive than plenty of other things, but establishing an addiction is not arbitrary. A person either meets the diagnostic criteria or does not. When diagnosing a substance use disorder (SUD) the following criteria is used:

1. Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than you meant to.

2. Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to.

3. Spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from use of the substance.

4. Cravings and urges to use the substance.

5. Not managing to do what you should at work, home, or school because of substance use.

6. Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships.

7. Giving up important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of substance use.

8. Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger.

9. Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance.

10. Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance).

11. Development of withdrawal symptoms, which can be relieved by taking more of the substance.

The DSM-5 allows clinicians to specify the severity of the substance use disorder, depending on how many symptoms are identified. Two or three symptoms indicate a mild substance use disorder, four or five symptoms indicate a moderate substance use disorder, and six or more symptoms indicate a severe substance use disorder.

So there you have it, in the comfort of your own home you, too, can diagnose SUD! The criteria above hold true across the board for all substances; there is nothing special about weed.

The rates that we have for addiction associated with weed are over a decade old, therefore they are most likely on the low to very low side of things. With that said, about one out of every nine adults and one out of every six juveniles who use weed will, at some point, meet the diagnostic criteria for addiction to THC. We’re not talking about opinion here, this is medicine.

“It’s Just a Plant”

Well, we have a whole chapter about that, don’t we! To summarize, it was just a plant but isn’t today. This is a manufactured drug that is produced with the intent of getting people higher than is natural. They like to tell you how a body naturally has cannabinol receptors so God must have intended us to use it. The answer to that is that our bodies have receptors for all kinds of things that are naturally produced, but not at the same levels as a foreign substance put into our bodies like today’s THC. Simply because we all have opioid receptors in our brains doesn’t mean we need opiates to live a whole life.

“It’s Safer than Alcohol”

This is one of the most nonsensical arguments imaginable but it gets traction. Is jumping out of a seven-story window safer than an eight-story window? Is getting hit by a truck worse than a car? They all have negative effects!

Alcohol is by far the most devastating substance in our country by almost every measurement imaginable; it is also far and away the most used. As use increases so does harm; it’s a ratio not a percentage. Alcohol is also tightly regulated (with federal support) and legal. They are actually presenting a pretty solid argument for making alcohol illegal much of the time, not adding to the list of readily available intoxicating substances. Since nobody is going to make alcohol illegal again we have to deal with what we are going to do now. We are not required to deal with legalized weed/commercialized THC (unless you live in, so far, a select few states), like we are with alcohol. It is a bigger issue than whether to choose weed or alcohol. Alcohol harms some people and not others, same as weed, but this has little to do with the legal status and more to do with how many people are using the drug. Remember: increased access means increased abuse.

“Nobody Has Ever Died from Weed”

Another common mistruth. A more accurate statement is “nobody has ever overdosed and died from THC.” Nobody has ever overdosed from cigarettes and died but would we say that tobacco has never killed anyone? Weed has killed plenty of people and, unfortunately, that list grows daily.

Richard Kirk’s defense in the murder trial of his wife faults THC intoxication as the reason why he should get a lighter sentence. In essence, they said, “The weed made me do it.” One hundred people died in Colorado in 2015 because someone high on THC hit them while driving. In addition to cumulative and driving deaths, there are fires, explosions, suicides (which hit an all-time high in 2015, incidentally), death of kids due to poor parenting or flawed product labeling decisions, homicides related to weed deals, etc.

Weed has never killed anyone in the same way that tobacco has never killed anybody and it’s not the alcohol to blame when someone drives drunk and takes a life. In these ways, people die all of the time as a result of weed. Saying otherwise is playing a deadly game of semantics. It’s short-sighted, and it mocks those who have died as a direct or indirect result of weed.

I just left an event at which a mother named Sally Schindel shared a gut-wrenching story about her veteran son Andy and the tragic loss of his life. Suicide is one of the hardest things to talk about and Mrs. Schindel did it with poise and compassion. I strongly encourage you to read her full story, it can be found many places online, Google: Sally Schindel, Andy’s Story.

At the event I attended, she showed a picture of the actual note her son left before he took his life after a long battle with marijuana addiction. It read: “My soul is already dead. Marijuana killed my soul plus ruined my brain.” She showed this note in his own handwriting that he penned before hanging himself. Read those words again and tell me that weed has never killed anyone. Better yet, drop Sally a note and tell her. She is easy to find, she spends her time fighting commercial marijuana in her home state of Arizona.

Now Google these names and show it to the kids and professors who tell you nobody has ever died from weed:

Daniel Juarez

Levy Thamba Pongi

Kristine Kirk

Luke Goodman

Tom Dohse

Gemma Moss

John O’Brien

Peyton Knowlton

Andrew “Andy” Zorn (Sally’s son)

“Traffic Fatalities in Colorado Are Down”

This is simplistic and inaccurate. They are down overall (thank you safer cars and less texting and driving) but way up for stoned drivers. Download that HIDTA report I mentioned because I can’t include it all here and these numbers deserve to be understood (search “Rocky Mountain HIDTA Marijuana Report”). Not only do we test about less than half of all the drivers involved in a fatal accident, we don’t always test them for THC. With that said the increase from 2012 to 2014 was 100 percent. Almost 100 people died on Colorado roads in 2014 because a driver was high on marijuana (MJ).

To give you an idea of how screwed up this stuff can get, here is an interesting story. Last year, I was invited to speak at the Vail Symposium; a super cool venue full of thoughtful people offering fascinating discussions on a wide range of topics. I was sharing the stage with Brian Vicente, one of the guys who wrote A64. Brian went first, and one of the focal points of his presentation was that traffic fatalities were down in the year since A64 passed. He made a big deal about this, saying fewer drunk drivers were on the road because they had all switched to weed; he pretty much touted weed as a traffic lifesaver. His perfect example of correlation and not causation was warmly received until I showed the slide below with the statistics from the HIDTA report. It reveals how ridiculous it is to say that weed makes for fewer traffic fatalities when, in fact, it had been cited as the factor in almost 100 traffic deaths the year prior.

While shocking, this data is only a small part of the real story when you keep in mind that only 47 percent of operators involved in traffic fatalities were tested at all for drug impairment. The sample showing the following was taken from less than half of drivers involved in fatal accidents!

In 2014 (first year of retail), there was a 32 percent increase in marijuana-related traffic deaths.

Marijuana-related traffic deaths increased 92 percent from 2010 to 2014, while all traffic fatalities in the same period rose only 8 percent.

In 2009, marijuana-related traffic deaths, where the driver tested positive for THC, made up 10 percent of all traffic fatalities; by 2014, that had climbed to 19.26 percent.

Saying that our roads are safer today because we now have the highest past-month marijuana use between adults and youth in the country is just plain ignorant and an example of data manipulation that would get most “experts” laughed out of the room. For some reason, it seems to play in the narrative because there are so many well-paid people making the case. Remember: their livelihood depends on passing off this fiction as truth.

Since numbers often seem to do little to sway public opinion, let me give an example that will hopefully put a face on the data. In November 2014, Chad Britton, a local high school student, went out to his car at lunchtime to put a few things away. At just about the same time Brandon Cullip, another student from a different school, was in his car with friends getting high. Despite being warned by his friends that he was too high to drive, Brandon ignored them and slammed into Chad, killing him. Chad lost his life because Brandon got high and drove. This is another example of causation and not correlation.

Source: Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas

Following the sentencing, Chad’s father did an interview and said, “I think it was probably the worst thing that could happen to the state of Colorado, passing the marijuana law.” The district attorney who prosecuted the case was quoted in the same article as saying, “The legalization of marijuana has supplied marijuana to kids and our youth and I don’t think it’s going to be the last time we have a tragedy like this because of marijuana.”

I often hear driving while high made light of by the pro-THC side, saying how much better it is than driving drunk. They say that people are more cautious and therefore better drivers, a message that unfortunately many teens are hearing loud and clear. In reality, a 2015 study by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that marijuana users are twenty-five times more likely to be in accidents than those who did not use THC. And by way of comparison, drunk drivers are four times more likely to crash than sober drivers—there goes that theory!

There is one more important consideration to keep in mind when looking at this data: cops don’t like to charge people with driving under the influence of weed. Since there is no breathalyzer or hardline legal limit for THC, it can be very difficult to get a conviction for drivers who are high. Consequently, if there is anything else they can charge the driver with, they do.

You see, with alcohol it’s simple: if a cop thinks you might be drunk they give you a breathalyzer. If you are over the legal limit of .08, you get arrested and charged with DUI. The case goes to trial, and with the blood alcohol level as evidence the driver is convicted and hopefully learns their lesson. The whole process is simple and straightforward.

With THC it’s different. If a cop thinks a motorist is high they have to call in a drug recognition expert (DRE), a cop who is specifically trained in detecting drug impairment. That DRE arrives on the scene and puts the driver through a series of tests (taking up a good deal more of law enforcement’s time than alcohol already at this point). If the DRE decides that the driver is under the influence of THC they try to get permission to draw blood. Since Colorado adopted a “limit” of 5ng/ml a blood test should be able to confirm if someone is “high” or not. And while Colorado does allow for the blood testing of any motorist thought to be intoxicated, it’s a much bigger pain for the cops than having a person blow into a breathalyzer. The worst part is that having over the limit of 5ng/ml doesn’t guarantee a conviction for DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) like testing over .08 does for DUI.

In March of 2016, a guy named Ralph Banks was arrested for DUID and tested at 7.9ng/ml, 2.9ng/ml higher than the “legal limit” in Colorado. The jury took less than thirty minutes to acquit him. Mr. Banks was able to retain Rob Corry, a big hired gun, to defend him. Rob played a pretty significant role in the passage of A64 and also likes to smoke weed. In September 2013, Rob was arrested at Coors Field for getting high in public as well as disobedience of a lawful order when he refused to give the officer, who he called a “stupid cop” the joint he was smoking. Rob knows THC law inside and out, in fact his website says “experience is key if you have been charged with a marijuana related crime.” Rob clearly has experience!

Anyway, following the verdict Rob was quoted as saying, “Now with this case, it’s perfectly legal to get behind the wheel after consuming marijuana as long as you’re not impaired.” Interestingly, multiple law enforcement officers, including a DRE, testified that Banks was impaired. The DA was then quoted as saying, “These are difficult cases to prosecute, but we continue to be concerned about the safety of the public. Our current law is not strong enough to effectively hold people accountable.” Bad news, Mr. DA, because thanks to Rob and the defense he mounted for Banks, it just got a hell of a lot harder to get a conviction in spite of doing everything from an enforcement angle the right way. For more on this issue I strongly suggest looking into the work of the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility and, specifically, the work of Erin Holmes, the Director of Public Safety.

“Crime Is Down in Colorado”

This little bit of data manipulation is one best left to the pros, the pro THC attorneys, and The Lobby. There are lots of ways to measure crime data, and if you pick them apart there is one possible way to argue that “crime is down” in Denver between 2013 and 2014. If you look only at “property crimes” you will see a 3 percent decrease. If you look at all crimes, including crimes against persons, crimes against society, and the catch-all “all other crimes,” you will see an increase of 10 percent in one year. When you look specifically at marijuana-related crime in Denver, you will notice that there were 223 “crimes” in 2012, 239 in 2013, and 272 in 2014, another solid increase. My personal favorite is citations for public consumption of weed in Denver. Even with all of the alternative forms of consumption like edibles and vapes, we see that citations for using in public went from 8 in 2012 to 770 in 2014. Now, does that sound like freeing up police time to focus on more important things or does it look like handcuffing them to weed crimes so they can focus on little else?

“Look at All of the Tax Dollars!”

When we hear that weed tax collections amounted to $44 million in 2014 and about $135 million in 2015, our collective jaws drop; those appear to be big numbers! When you consider that our state operating budget for 2015 was $27,133,501,093 tax revenues of $135 million, less than half a percent of the budget, suddenly get a lot smaller. Think of Dr. Evil in the second Austin Powers movie saying they are going to extort “one million dollars” and everyone just looks at him—it’s really not that much money. To you and me, $135 million is a pile of money; to a state government it’s a rounding error.

The retort from The Industry is “It’s money kept out of the black market.” The retort to that retort is “No, it isn’t.” Since so many more people are using, thanks to the business marketing machines, that money would have likely been spent on other things that people needed more than weed, like diapers and what not. This point can be illustrated by the bill that was passed in Colorado in September 2014, called the “no welfare for weed” bill. This legislation restricted the use of government welfare cards being used at ATMs inside of weed shops. The Industry is driving use, not the other way around.

The real bottom line, and the reason why John Hickenlooper, our governor, is to this day telling other states not to legalize commercial THC for the money, is that you need that money to pay for the harms caused by the proliferation of the drug. Think of it like stepping out in front of a truck so that you can get the insurance money to pay for your injuries; doesn’t make a ton of sense, does it? Because there are so many more harms being caused in our society because of the widespread use, we need more money to mitigate them. Law enforcement, treatment for substance use and related mental health issues, plus regulation are just a few of the costly hidden expenses. While some localities might actually net money from weed taxes, the state as a whole will lose big. It’s a classic example of stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime, or more realistically, stepping over a ten-dollar bill to pick up a nickel.

“The Drug War Has Failed”

This one has to be the loudest argument in favor of legalization right now, and it seems like everyone is saying, “We all know that the war on drugs has failed.” Lately, I’m hearing that almost daily and this argument makes me nuts! I’m going to stick to the spirit of this chapter and give you a simple retort for the seventeen-year-olds and professors with ponytails, but first I need to vent. It isn’t even an argument; it’s a statement given as fact that alienates differing viewpoints with the “everybody knows” bit. How dare we disagree with something so obviously true! One must be either stupid or just plain ignorant to not understand what “everybody knows.” Claiming this narrative as fact removes the opportunity for discussion, and that is ignorant. In fact, everybody doesn’t know that the war on drugs has failed and how, on God’s green earth, could anyone ever substantiate such a statement by relying solely on opinion and anecdotal examples. It’s like the woman who once started a question following a talk I gave by saying, “It’s a given that drug abuse prevention has failed in this country.” Says who? It’s impossible to know what the world would look like without prevention (thank God). Likewise, we can’t say the war on drugs has failed because there is no definition of winning that war short of a 100 percent substance-free society. Bad news there, that won’t ever happen.

The phrase is wrong and even though I wasn’t alive when it was coined, it’s my understanding that President Nixon called the combination of enforcement, education, prevention, and education a “war.” That was probably, in retrospect, pretty silly but that administration had its reasons: it was an all-out effort to eradicate drug use and abuse, and their resultant problems and cost to individuals and society. Nixon had declared drug abuse “public enemy number one.” Maybe the administration was trying to convey the extreme importance of the issue to the public, using the strongest language they could in hopes of preventing more death and destruction; who knows. The problem with using that language, nearly fifty years later, is that it leaves us all wondering what the plan is to exit that war. My generation has spent lots of time thinking about those kinds of things politically in recent years. But if total victory in the drug war is not realistic how should we approach it? I guess we begin by settling for a less-than-perfect world, but I would rather live in a world that tries for the best possible outcome than one that throws in the towel because perfection eludes us. Some people I hang out with encourage us to pursue progress rather than perfection. That’s good advice. Should we abandon the war on speeding because we don’t have 100 percent compliance, or the war on car theft, robbery, terrorism, white-collar theft . . . you get the picture. Should we stop fighting those things or just say, “Screw it!” because we haven’t gotten it perfect?

Let me pose a question: What would it look like if we abandoned the “enforcing drug laws” and called it that rather than a “war”?

I’m reminded of a line by one of my favorite poets, 2Pac, who essentially said we’re waging the wrong war—one on drugs instead of on poverty. He was both right and wrong at the same time. Poverty is the real issue and we should stop treating the symptoms and do more to help those living in generational poverty to escape its cycle. He was misguided by proposing it as an either/or deal. Fighting drugs and fighting poverty could go hand-in-hand if anyone had the guts to take on something so complex. Earlier in that same song, he said that we weren’t ready to have a black president. While the nation wasn’t ready back in 1996 we are now, with Barack Obama who made it through two terms in the nation’s highest office. It was about time we had a non-rich-white-guy president, and so much good has happened as a result, but he blew it on drug policy. While saying almost nothing, a new industry has sprung to life hell-bent on expanding use and taking money from our society’s most vulnerable. I can’t help but consider and mourn for the opportunity missed by a man so looked up to by youth and minority communities. With a few words, he could have changed the perception of hundreds of thousands of people for years to come and reduced the harms created by drugs in those communities. Instead of taking anything that resembled a leadership stance on drug use, he joked about getting high in school. Now I hear regularly that weed is a gateway drug to the White House. Considering an outlier as extreme as the president of the United States without considering the masses who have had their lives derailed, ruined or lost because of drugs is just nuts. Mr. Obama blew it on this front and his legacy will include what I believe will be seen as a mistake in years to come. He is the president who gave weed dealers a license to deal and traffic, mostly in the communities he says he cares most about. I wonder what he would do if he were raising his daughters alongside my kids in Colorado, would his stance have been the same?

Since I’m naming names I have to talk about Eric Holder for a second. That guy couldn’t get out of office fast enough in my opinion. An attorney general does not get to pick and choose what laws they enforce based on how much they like the law. Their job is to uphold the laws of the land, not just the ones they dig. His actions and inactions on this issue have been devastating and the blame for many of the issues I’ve highlighted throughout this book lies at his feet. He should have to sit in a room with parents whose kids’ lives were wrecked or lost in the last few years because of THC. That would get real pretty fast.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest we can go back to this talking point. Can you imagine what it would be like if we didn’t try to stop drugs from coming into our country or to stop those dealing them from trafficking? Take a moment to consider life without enforcing these laws. Would the cartels be happy or sad if we stopped fighting them? How about the street dealers, who don’t give a second thought to those who die using their products? Would they be depressed? I don’t know about you, but I like that we fight back. I also don’t believe that I know everything and choose to trust those we have appointed to protect and serve, to keep us safe. If law enforcement decides we should stop fighting drugs I’ll reconsider, but for now I’m going to stand with our men and women in uniform and wish them safety and success fighting drugs and the devastation those drugs cause. I don’t put my life on the line when I go to work every day but they do. We should not only listen a bit more to them, but we should tip our hats when they walk by rather than sneer. There are bad eggs in any field, law enforcement included, but for the most part these are some of the most honorable and upstanding men and women I know, who genuinely care about the communities they serve, and I’m going to stand behind them.

So how do we answer the question at hand? I would start with another question: “War is a bad term, are you proposing that we stop enforcing the laws?”

If that doesn’t work ask them to define “war.” I only do this to the ponytail types because it’s kind of mean. Ask for some specifics about what the “war on drugs” is and watch the squirming. It’s as hard to define and qualify as anything out there and individual talking points are easily countered. If all else fails ask a follow-up question: “How will we determine if any new approach has succeeded or failed; what would you measure?” Would you consider . . .

Locking people up? We seldom do that with low-level offenders, so do you think we should stop punishing traffickers? Is it substance specific? How about somebody who gets caught a dozen times, do they need help? How can we get them that help without a legal stick? This country has a long history of locking too many people up, sometimes for very silly things, but we typically incarcerate people for doing bad things while being intoxicated and not for simply possessing a small amount of anything for personal use.

Locking up minorities? Agreed, that sucks! Why do we do it for all crimes? Could it be we have more of an issue with poverty and racism than drugs? Is disproportionate incarceration confined to just drugs? The answer is that it is not, and I for one would like to see a much more substantive conversation taking place about root causes.

Spending money that could be spent elsewhere . . . where? Would you use it for more treatment to counter the huge increase there would be in use, if it could be done with impunity? Would you use the dollars to pay for all of the tow trucks we would need to move the cars that people smash driving wasted because we stopped enforcement? Since intoxication often leads to poor decisions we would need that money to clean up the messes made by more intoxicated people making poor decisions. Maybe we could just give the money we weren’t spending on enforcement directly to China. If our kids grow up higher on weed and their kids grow up studying harder who do we think will be the boss?

This argument makes no logical sense because we will never know what the world would look like today without the enforcement of the last several decades, and I think that’s a good thing, with the exception of a mentality that seems to exist in some places that we should incarcerate everyone who makes a mistake as well as the examples out there of senseless enforcement and overzealous cops/prosecutors. Do you want to really take a bite out of the cartels? Let’s start by getting less high in this country and reducing the demand that they will kill in a heartbeat to supply.

“It’s Medicine”

For some people it might have medicinal benefits but that is a small group of very sick people. Medicines are double blind, placebo-control tested. If you want to say that it’s medicine then treat it as such, with testing and regulations—real regulations. Medicines can be dangerous if you’re not careful, and the side effects can be very real.

“Legalization Is Inevitable,
We Might as Well Get in Line with It”

I was talking to a reporter recently about my opposition to any more weed shops in the city where I live. She told me that a city council member had just told her, “We already have two [shops] so what’s the harm in adding more?” This makes about as much sense as, “Well, we have two inches of water in the house, what’s the difference if we get another thirty?”

This guy, like so many others, has bought into the “inevitability” argument, which is an old political trick. Ever wonder why we always introduce candidates as, “The next mayor . . . the next senator . . . the next president . . . ”? People want to back a winner and once a candidate is perceived as the winner it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s kind of Sociology 101 stuff, we all want to be on the winning team. It’s also a convenient, albeit irresponsible, way to avoid making thoughtful decisions and taking responsibility for what happens.

Using a very slick bit of strategy, The Lobby started talking about how inevitable commercialized THC was after Colorado and Washington passed it. The press loved that. They ran with that idea like it was their own and pretty soon the whole conversation pivoted. Two states had passed commercialized THC, by rather narrow margins, and all of the sudden, according to commentators and analysts in the media, as well as pop culture icons, it was a matter of a couple of years before the country followed suit and then most of the world! This is political strategy not real prediction. Since 2012, here is what has actually happened:

Oregon and Alaska passed recreational THC bills (paid for and built by the DPA). Both are in the process of implementing commercial sales.

The District of Columbia passed true decriminalization without commercialization.

Maine, Nevada, California, and Massachusetts just passed recreational laws and will be implementing them by 2018.

Recently much more has happened to contradict the inevitable narrative, but it just doesn’t get the same press coverage nationally.

Ohio voted down commercialized THC as well as “medical” by a huge margin, by an almost two to one margin in 2016. In politics it is often said, “As goes Ohio so goes the nation.” While this bill was pretty crazy from a commercial standpoint, it also included “medical” and it still went down in flames. This happened in spite of the millions spent by the “pro” side. Ohio failed; “As goes Ohio so goes the nation?”

Missouri turned down a loose “medical bill.” Georgia, Utah, and Idaho all refused to allow for expanded CBD, passing only “medical” bills, despite tons of pressure.

Vermont didn’t move forward and a lot of states are wisely sitting back and watching Colorado. If we are the canary in the coal mine, everybody had better give us more time to see if we turn up singing, coughing, or dead.

In 2015, Florida voters narrowly rejected a constitutional amendment legalizing the use of “medical” marijuana, the details of which were totally insane. Thankfully, enough people saw through that one because, had they passed it, it would have basically created a totally unregulated market overnight. Another piece of good news since that amendment provision died: the police continue to not arrest sick and dying people who smoke a bit of weed.

The reality is that the low hanging fruit has been plucked by the DPA and is being eaten by The Industry. We will continue to see more rejections than adoptions of THC commercialization moving forward as the data coming out of Colorado gets harder and harder to square up with and people in Wyoming (and other conservative states) consider these laws as opposed to people in Oregon (and other liberal and libertarian states). At some point the media will have to reflect the reality. Who knows, maybe Arianna Huffington will get a new board position, maybe with MADD or something.

If it is inevitable, why have so many more states rejected it than accepted in the last five years? It was inevitable that it happen somewhere given the money that was being spent, but people will wait to see the data coming out of these places over the next several years before any big changes take place across the nation. Given the early numbers we are seeing, it’s pretty unlikely that many other states will follow suit. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked, passing recreational laws in Colorado will prove much easier than in Utah, in California than in Texas, and in Maine as opposed to Virginia.

Listed below are some organizations worth checking out:

Parents Opposed to Pot (www.poppot.org)

A website that consists of (mostly parents) people who are opposed to the legalization and social acceptance of marijuana for the many reasons noted in this book. The website contains information and articles on the dangers of marijuana, including marijuana-related deaths among youths. Provided are testimonials from parents who have children addicted to marijuana.

Pueblo for Positive Impact (Facebook page and www.propuebloco.com)

An advocacy group in Pueblo County, Colorado (now recognized as the marijuana capital of Colorado) that opposes the legalization of marijuana and the dispensaries that have cropped up in their county.
It provides statistics on the dangers of marijuana use, and also posts articles about marijuana and crime-related stories linked to pot in Pueblo County.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) (www.learnaboutsam.org)

Professionals in mental and public health. This bipartisan group does not condone either the legalization or the demonization of marijuana, but seeks to educate citizens on the science of marijuana and to promote health-first, smart policies and attitudes that decrease marijuana use and its consequences.

The Marijuana Report (www.themarijuanareport.org)

This website is published by National Families in Action (NFIA). The report is a news aggregator website that links browsers to daily news coverage of the marijuana story across the nation. They put out a monthly e-newsletter and are partnered with SAM. Their mission is to help leaders make informed decisions about marijuana policy, including public, company, and family policy.

Consider what the Dalai Lama has had to say about craving, desire, and addiction:

“Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.”

“Self-satisfaction alone cannot determine if a desire or action is positive or negative. The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction, but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences.”

“When we think carefully, we see that the brief elation we experience when appeasing sensual impulses may not be very different from what the drug addict feels when indulging his or her habit. Temporary relief is soon followed by a craving for more. And in just the same way that taking drugs in the end only causes trouble, so, too, does much of what we undertake to fulfill our immediate sensory desires.”

“When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes—I already have everything that I really need.’ ”