Lakewood, CO — On Friday, May 4th at 2:00 pm, the Centennial Institute, Smart Colorado, and The Marijuana Accountability Coalition delivered a letter to Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock at Denver City Hall calling on the city to ban individuals under the age of 21 from attending marijuana rallies where they are exposed to hazardous secondhand smoke. Continue reading Denver Community Leaders Ask Mayor to Keep Kids Out of Pot Rallies
Tag Archives: 420 celebration
Seven Amazing Reasons to Legalize Marijuana Now
(Edited commentary from two of our followers who insisted we share both sides of the issue.)
Dear Friend — The reasons for the rest of America to follow the states of Washington and Colorado, and to legalize marijuana, are overwhelming. Even if you’re not with the program yet, read on and then … FORWARD this MESSAGE!
(7)TAX and REGULATE To enable cities, counties and states to siphon all that revenue from the criminals, enough marijuana users will be happy to pay twice the street price to eliminate the underground market. During that stretch, fire departments will get new trucks hospital emergency teams will get overtime pay to deal with amateur chemists making butane hash oil in hotels, homes and apartments buildings. Forget the surge in tax money for mental health and addiction treatment.
(6) DISCOURAGE TEEN USE. Never mind that teen use of marijuana plunged by 33% from 1980 to 1992. We still say the War on Drugs is responsible for making our youth want to light up, and try pot brownies. Obviously, when you tell kids to avoid something, they go after it. Therefore, the best way to discourage teen use of pot is to have competition. The street price will drop by 50% and we can let Phillip Morris put marijuana cigarettes and snacks in convenience stores. When marijuana is all over the place, kids won’t want it. Only mature adults will want it and maturity is automatic when a person turns 21.
(5) GET TOUGH WITH DRUG LORDS. When 20 million of my fellow stokers, jokers and midnight tokers can get their marijuana legally, the cartels are likely to shift into something respectable. Those guys will soon be up against an economic wall. Nobody understands ADDICTION better than some of this country’s great corporations, especially the pharmaceutical, tobacco and alcohol.
We need Big Business to take charge, enhance the potency of the plant, nail down the distribution system, and build good vending machines. Mom & Pop growers can’t do that. Let Phillip Morris and Miracle Gro show the way. The answer to Big Booze and Big Cigs is … jeez, what would it be called? Maybe … BIG DOPE.
(4) SAFER ROADS Marijuana users don’t drive fast and get angry like those drunks. If anything, they have to be more careful when they’re baked. Besides, the Marijuana Policy Project tells us that Marijuana is SAFER than Alcohol. In October 2012, Joseph Beer crashed his new sports car into a tree on a Long Island highway. Four of his friends died, his own injuries were minor, and he got 5 to 15 years. Court testimony found Joe to be a chronic marijuana smoker, and wired with weed during this wild ride. Okay, bad break for Beer’s friends. What can anyone conclude from a single accident? –It’s not safe to drive at 100 miles per hour. (Of course the weed has nothing to do with that, since that makes you drive slowly.)
(3) POLICE FREE FOR SERIOUS CRIMES. Making marijuana cheaper, common, and not such a big deal will free up law enforcement officials to concentrate on real crime. Marijuana will be in all 50 states, in every city, with home delivery like happens with pizza, and vending machines close to schools, and candy sellers walking up and down the bleachers during ball games, and snacks with kiddish labels — all of this will also guarantee that the cops have “more serious problems” to address!
(2) REDUCE CRIME BY REMOVING LABELS Things that have been criminal for decades can become legal. After pot-use becomes a street-corner norm, we can carry that lesson over to neighborhood speed limits, shoplifting, insider trading, and software piracy. There will still be burglaries but so what, we’ll have our freedom. When enough people DO IT, the law should just say SCREW IT, except for
(1) DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, and we will save police for domestic abuse cases.
Doing away with criminality of marijuana, our police forces can focus on domestic violence, child abuse and pedophilia, since those guys are bad anyways, and it has nothing to do with drugs. Their addictions are sex, bullying and fighting. With those guys locked locked up, the rest of us will be totally free and dancing in the streets. It’ll be 420 every day and that’s our America!
Yours for a Healthy America,
NORMA L. NOSTRUMS and NORM L. SAFER
A Look Inside Colorado’s Pot Industry
By Ben Cort, Board Member, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM); Director of Business Development/CeDAR at the University of Colorado Hospital. The original article is from CADCA’s website.
Last month I was honored to speak at CADCA’s National Leadership Forum about marijuana legalization in my home state of Colorado. I wish I could say that I was caught off guard by the reaction I received but I wasn’t. It’s the same everywhere. When people hear what is going on, when they see the pictures and advertisements, the reactions are inevitable; shock, outrage, anger, even fear.
I live in Colorado, work inside of substance abuse treatment, am in recovery myself and I have three young children in public school, that’s my platform.
Make no mistake about it, we did not just legalize weed in Colorado we christened the commercialization and industrialization of the marijuana industry in Colorado. We welcomed in a new industry that knowingly promotes an addictive and harmful substance SO THAT PEOPLE COULD MAKE MONEY. The business of business is to make money and when there is money to be made people will signup no matter how messed up the means are. Let’s take a quick look at how the money is and will be made inside of this industry.
As of this writing there are 47 stores in Colorado that can sell recreational weed, there are about another 300 in the queue. Already the competition is fierce and the marketing wars are heating up, imagine what will come next. Right now we have everything from free T-shirts with your weed purchase and take-out orders to home delivery and a $1 joint when you show your ski pass for the day. For these businesses to continue making the huge money they are making they will need to do two things: 1) engage new users, 2) convert current users to more frequent users.
To differentiate themselves from the competition they will offer the most amount of THC they can for the lowest price possible, sound like some potential for trouble? Our weed in Colorado is so strong (20-30 percent THC in its smoked form) that we have a strain called “green crack.” We also have a full range of edibles and concentrates, these businesses are diversifying and engaging with new (and younger) customers through new products.
Our concentrates, which are advertised aggressively, are 80-90 percent THC, and are often smoked on a super-heated needle and puts the smoker on their back with one hit. Our edibles come in gummies, fruit sodas, suckers, candy and yummy looking baked goods that are so potent that a single pot brownie in Colorado comes with a warning that it has to be cut into fourths before consuming.
I’m guessing the 2-year-old child who ended up in the ER a few miles from my house last month didn’t read the label on the weed cookie she found before eating it.
A smart man learns from his mistakes, a wise man from the mistakes of others. Consider that old saying and the plight of Colorado when considering legalization in your home state.
Legalized Marijuana: A Lesson in Failure
Supporters of pot reform promised legalization would “regulate” it and keep profits away from cartels. It was “inventive” to think a “weed” could be regulated. In practice, the lure of without much worry about devious marketing practices, kids’ perceptions and the consequences of child abuse. It was national news when 4th graders bought and sold marijuana at a Greeley, CO, school, on two separate occasions during the week of April 21, 2014. Both children had taken the marijuana products from grandparents.
The “trickle-down” effect that comes when pot is promoted for its money-making potential, and the increased usage, have been tragic for children in Colorado and in Washington. A two-year old died Continue reading Legalized Marijuana: A Lesson in Failure