Catching up on a story from earlier this year: Former Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Tyler Mason is currently on probation after reportedly taking a plea deal following accusations that he’d attempted to smuggle marijuana edibles into Boulder County Jail.
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Back in April, Governor John Hickenlooper and the governors of three other states that have legalized recreational marijuana sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging them to respect the rights of states to pass such measures, and to consult with the states that have been operating under 2013’s Cole Memorandum before making any enforcement changes.
Editor’s note: The July 25 post “Shawn Geerdes’s Marijuana-Grow Murder Used to Attack Legal Pot” asserted that 18th Judicial District DA and 2018 Colorado gubernatorial candidate George Brauchler had attempted to score political points with anti-cannabis critics by way of post-prosecution statements such as, “Here is yet another violent crime related to marijuana. Whatever benefits there may be from the legalization of marijuana, eradicating violent crime associated with it is not one of them.” Here’s his response.
A recent study published in the Journal of Substance Use and Misuse shows retail marijuana stores aren’t changing the rate of marijuana consumption among children in Colorado. Led by researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus College of Nursing and Department of Community and Behavioral Health, the year-long project studied how the first year of legalized marijuana sales affected the rate of marijuana use among adolescents, and the public’s perception of children’s access to marijuana.
During a recent interview with Westword, Smart Approaches to Marijuana President and CEO Kevin Sabet, one of America’s most influential critics of cannabis legalization, offered an unexpected observation about his visits to Denver. According to Sabet, a number of vehicles provided to him by Denver International Airport rental-car businesses over the past few years have smelled strongly of pot. He added that he’s had to exchange rentals multiple times at DIA before he’s been given one that didn’t reek of weed, giving him numerous opportunities to “educate” personnel at the agencies about the scope of a problem he views as positively chronic.
The drafters of Denver’s social cannabis consumption initiative have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with the city’s finalized rules and distance requirements for businesses applying to open a consumption area. Now they’re taking it a step further, threatening to sue the City of Denver if less restrictive rules aren’t put in place.
Colorado’s cannabis industry has been holding its collective breath ever since President Donald Trump nominated Jeff Sessions for attorney general. And since he was sworn in, Sessions, a proponent of the war on drugs, hasn’t been shy about saying that marijuana should remain illegal federally.
In a proactive move, on April 3 the governors of four states with recreational cannabis businesses up and running at the time — Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — sent a letter to Sessions and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging that federal officials “engage with us before embarking on any changes to regulatory and enforcement systems.”
Jeff Hunt, the vice president of public policy at Colorado Christian University, invited Westword and others to share his op-ed titled “Marijuana Devastated Colorado, Don’t Legalize It Nationally” earlier this week. Although we declined, USA Today obliged in spreading Hunt’s reefer-madness gospel on August 7. And Hunt’s piece — as well as the alleged facts, studies and sources he used to hammer home his point — elicited quite the response.
Among those at the center of an unprecedented lawsuit filed against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over federal scheduling of marijuana is Alexis Bortell, eleven, who had to move with her family from Texas to the Colorado community of Larkspur in order to legally use medical cannabis, which has eliminated the epileptic seizures she regularly suffered. She represents a group of patients that her lawyer, Michael Hiller, describes as “medical marijuana refugees.”
Keith Hammock has been found guilty of second-degree murder and more for killing one teenager and wounding another last October after they’d jumped a fence into his back yard, where he was growing marijuana. The verdict demonstrates the limitations of Colorado’s famous Make My Day law, especially when it comes to pot grows deemed illegal.