By Randy Robinson
Colorado’s been doing quite well these past two years, ever since
recreational cannabis became legal. As a result of the “Great Experiment,”
crime and traffic fatalities are down, drug incarcerations are down, and tax
revenue is through the roof. In fact, we had so much tax from the social pot
scene that the state almost returned tens of millions of dollars back to us
taxpayers; instead, we voted to let the state keep it.
“
That’s the big picture. On a smaller scale,
not everyone’s enjoying the high life. Colorado
Springs, the second largest city in the
state, banned sales of recreational cannabis
just as the rest of the state opened its
doors to legalization. And despite the city’s
residents voting in favor of Amendment
64 by around 5,000 votes, the city council
chose to opt out.Ironically, this little opt-out provision
to ban recreational stores was built
into the law: if a city in Colorado
doesn’t want legal weed, it doesn’t
have to have it. Even if the voters
approved.”
Colorado Springs: Not a Free Market
Colorado Springs’ city council didn’t stop
with just legal recreation marijuana. In the
last year, the city council banned all home
manufacture of life-saving cannabis oil
within city limits. Then, just last month, the
city council approved a moratorium on
cannabis clubs.
Cannabis clubs are private buildings where
anyone over the age of 21 can meet other
tokers and consume marijuana socially.
These clubs are great places for rookies
to get a hands-on education in safe use.
Public consumption of cannabis is still illegal
in Colorado, it’s now a civil infraction
that nets a $100 fine. Tourists, technically,
can only blaze up in these clubs.
The club moratorium basically prevents
any new cannabis clubs from opening for
the next six months. For entrepreneurs who
already invested in construction, renovation
– and licensing – for a new club, city
council says, “Too bad.” The moratorium
goes a step further, and even blocks existing
clubs from expanding, renovating, or
changing location.
Colorado Springs’ government was on a
roll, and their interference into the city’s
cannabis industry went even further. At
the end of October, they approved another
moratorium, this time against medical
dispensaries. Just like cannabis clubs,
no new dispensaries are allowed to open
for at least six months. Existing dispensaries
cannot expand or move location. No new
grows, no renovations. Nada.
One dispensary owner expressed his concern
at an Oct. 13 council meeting. He
claimed his lease was going to end in the
next couple of months. The moratorium
would prevent him from getting a new
lease for his business. In other words, he’s
out of luck, and may go bankrupt.
Another dispensary owner outright threatened
the council with litigation. “If you
approve this moratorium, we will file a class
action lawsuit against the city,” he warned
from the podium.
Only four of the nine council members listened.
The dispensary moratorium passed
by a single vote.
When activists, patients, attorneys and
dispensary owners asked city council to
provide a reason for the moratorium, Don
Knight, one of the council members, replied
that the city needed to revise the
regulations. When pressed for further explanation,
he couldn’t provide any. There
have been zero burglaries and robberies
at Colorado Spring’s dispensaries since
2011. Crime rates haven’t gone up in areas
with dispensaries. Land values haven’t
gone down in response to a dispensary’s
presence. Data shows teens in Colorado
are consuming less cannabis than the national
average.
Knight then demonstrated he’s either
wholly ignorant of his city’s cannabis regulations
or that he’s not a clever spin doctor
– and I’m not sure which one’s worse. He
claimed zoning laws were unfair to alcohol
vendors, because booze peddlers had to
jump through more hoops to get licensing
(another claim he failed to support with
evidence). “They want to regulate it like
alcohol, that’s what they’re always saying,”
he told the council. “Then let’s regulate
it like alcohol.”
No, we don’t want to regulate medical
cannabis like alcohol, Mr. Knight. “Regulating
like alcohol” was a campaign slogan
for recreational cannabis, not medical.
(However, to his credit, the only similarity
between marijuana and alcohol regulation
in Colorado is the age requirement for
purchase – and that’s pretty much it.)
After hours of deliberation, Knight ran
out of tricks. He couldn’t give reasonable
answers to residents who demanded
even one solid explanation for why the
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EDUCATINGING
dispensary moratorium was necessary.
That’s when Knight pulled his final ace: he
called up Lee McRae, the city’s licensing
officer, to the podium. McRae was asked
what complaints people filed regarding
the city’s medical dispensaries. He replied
that a few residents complained about the
smell of marijuana coming from some of
the shops.
The smell. Potentially millions of dollars will
be in limbo for half a year because a few
residents don’t like the skunk funk. Here
we have the right-wing prohibitionists on
city council, claiming they want to create
jobs, claiming they support free markets,
yet their rhetoric doesn’t match up to their
actions.
These supposed free-market warriors
are forcing hard-working, honest
dispensary owners into financial
hardship – because some people
whined about the smell of cannabis.
That was it.”
Purple Mountains, Purple Haze
But why Colorado Springs, of all cities?
What makes the Springs so much different
from Denver, which continues to wow
the world with the great legalization experiment?
Denver’s experiencing an economic
and cultural Renaissance due to
cannabis sales. It’s in the news practically
every day for some new innovation, business
strategy, gimmick or legislation related
to marijuana. And to the south of Colorado
Springs is Pueblo, a quiet industrial town
that’s also been bustling over the last two
years due to its recreational market.
First, Colorado Springs is unlike the rest of
the state. It sits between four major military
installations: two Air Force bases, one Army
base and NORAD. It’s home to the New
Life Megachurch and the religious conservative
policy groups “Focus on the Family”
and the so-called Family Research Center.
All three organizations have publicly denounced
the state’s cannabis programs.
Then there’s the history. Colorado Springs
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is home to the illustrious Broadmoor Hotel,
a swanky spot where former President
George W. Bush became a born-again
Christian – while whacked out in the
middle of a cocaine binge. In downtown
Colorado Springs, you’ll find the Antlers Hilton
Hotel, the place where Katherine Lee
Bates wrote our nation’s patriotic jingle,
“America the Beautiful.”
According to legend, Bates originally
titled her most famous work “Pikes Peak,”
named after the mountain peak that’s
visible from nearly every point in Colorado
Springs. Maybe it’s because Bates’ song
extended the metaphor of Colorado’s
mountains to the entire nation’s identity.
Maybe Colorado Springs’ prohibitionists
see their city as the final all-American bastion
in the great war against the Devil’s
lettuce.
Colorado Springs has, in a business-like
sense, branded itself as the city that is
not Denver. The city council’s prohibitionists
take pride in the idea that their city
doesn’t allow recreational pot sales. They
want Colorado Springs to be a “familyfriendly”
town that attracts tourists on its
own merits, not just on legal weed.
Part of this family-friendly image is catering
to the military presence in the city. Activeduty
service members bring a lot of revenue
to Colorado Springs. All but two members
of the city council are former military
(yet, oddly enough, the three pro-cannabis
council members are former military,
too). The prohibitionists claim if they permit
recreational cannabis within city limits, the
military will move its bases elsewhere.
However, Denver has Buckley Air Force
Base. And it’s still there, operating normally,
even after two years of legalization.
Doubling Down on Double Standards
Of course, what the city council considers
“family-friendly” is up for debate.
“There’s a truck that drives around
this city with an aborted fetus
plastered on the side of its trailer.
Even though drivers have complained
that this mobile billboard
featuring a giant dead baby is a traffic
distraction, city council has done
nothing about it.”
Then there’s the liquor stores, all of the
liquor stores. There’s one on practically
every corner. City council has no problem
with alcohol being sold recreationally,
even though this is a substance that
causes 88,000 deaths per year in the US
alone, according to the Center for Disease
Control.
On that note, Colorado Springs has a problem
with recreational alcohol in its downtown
district. There are constant fist fights,
stabbings, beatings and even shootings
around downtown’s bars and nightclubs.
Oddly enough, most of these altercations
involve active-duty soldiers – the very same
soldiers that city council caters to. Yet city
council hasn’t pushed for any moratoriums
against the city’s bars, night clubs or liquor
stores. There’ve been no moratoriums on
knife, gun or ammo sales, either.
Not that any of this really matters. There’s a
little known secret here in Colorado Springs
that city council doesn’t like to talk about.
It’s called Manitou Springs, a tiny mountain
town that’s just a 10-minute drive from
downtown Colorado Springs.
Manitou Springs has two recreational
shops: Maggie’s Farm and Emerald Fields.
We don’t know how much tax revenue
they’ve pulled in for Manitou (due to privacy
laws regarding taxes), but they’re
always busy. If you’ve ever driven along
Colorado Avenue from downtown Colorado
Springs to Manitou Springs, you see just
how absurd these moratoriums and bans
truly are. That’s because Manitou Springs
is practically part of Colorado Springs,
yet Colorado Springs gets none of the tax
revenue from Manitou’s businesses. That
means all of the taxes Colorado Springs
could be collecting from its residents and
tourists is getting rerouted to its neighbors in
Denver,a Pueblo and Manitou Springs.
Is Colorado Springs’ government trying to
quietly stamp out its cannabis industry via
legislation? It wouldn’t be a shocker: the
city’s new mayor is none other than John
Suthers, our state’s former DA. Suthers is no
friend of Colorado’s green industry, and
he’s been vocally hostile toward legal
pot since he came into office. The unholy
union between Suthers, the prohibitionists
on city council, and possibly the commissioners
of nearby towns (with legal rec cannabis,
ironically) may all be in cahoots to
make Colorado Springs the state’s second
“Great Experiment.”
Except whereas Denver is the testing
ground for legalization, Colorado Springs
may be the testing ground for prohibition.
And if you’d like to see how well that’s
going, just cruise through the Springs on
any given night and note how many street
lights are shut off, how many potholes pock
the roads, and how many local businesses
have been abandoned.
