This fall has seen a myriad of crime related to marijuana home grows. At last week’s Marijuana Management Symposium, a panel on law enforcement and public safety comprising Denver Police Commander James Henning,  former Erie police chief Marco Vasquez and Aurora Police Sergeant Scott Pendleton advised law enforcement reps from other states on what Colorado has done right in handling cannabis-related crimes — and what it should have done differently.

Henning addressed the issue of cannabis home grows, which he says have become a bigger problem in Colorado since Amendment 64 passed. “The black market and marijuana, it got big here,” he said. “It got much bigger. The black market in marijuana is booming.”

Denver Ordinance 300, which is on the ballot this November, would allow businesses to opt into allowing marijuana on their premises. After proponents put up a billboard pointing out that allowing restaurants to have private consumption areas would keep tokers off the sidewalk, Westword sat down with Rachel O’Bryan, the campaign manager for Protect Denver’s Atmosphere, the group opposing the initiative. An attorney by trade, O’Bryan was part of a task force that addressed possible criminal-law issues after Amendment 64 passed, allowing recreational marijuana in Colorado. O’Bryan makes it clear that her group is not opposed to recreational marijuana or legalization per se, but opposes 300 specifically as a matter of public safety.

Cannabis and music have always gone hand in hand, but even since Colorado legalized recreational pot use in 2012 with Amendment 64, it is still illegal to consume cannabis in public and in private businesses that are accessed by the public – including concert venues.

This November, voters in Denver will have the opportunity to address the issue with Ballot Question 300, which, if passed, will create a pilot program that allows limited social cannabis consumption in permitted private establishments.

Dear Stoner: Does the pot-smoking measure have a chance in November? What will it do?
Hopeful

Dear Hopeful: Although “Responsible Use Denver” — the NORML proposal to allow licensing for private marijuana clubs and special events — fell short of the 4,726 valid signatures needed to make the ballot, the Neighborhood Supported Cannabis Consumption Pilot Program submitted more than 10,000, which gives you an idea of its popularity. If passed, the measure would allow regular businesses to have private pot-consumption areas. First, though, a business would have to apply to its presiding neighborhood or local business organization and work out a good-neighbor plan, just as bars have done in some areas. (Remember, Amendment 64 was sold as treating pot like alcohol.)

Last year, for example, Project SAM, an organization co-founded by former representative Patrick Kennedy and launched in Denver, claimed that national figures from the Department of Health and Human Services showed “heavy marijuana use” was “soaring among young people,” when the stats actually demonstrated that the overall number had dropped substantially. After being called out by the Washington Post, Project SAM withdrew its original press release on the topic.

That could explain why the 2015 Health Kids Colorado Survey, just issued by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (see it below), underlines “not” in the grabbiest weed-related finding in the report: “Four out of five Colorado high school students have not used marijuana in the last thirty days.”

Other findings are similar — yet plenty of people continue to believe that the 2012 passage of Amendment 64, which legalized limited recreational marijuana sales to adults in Colorado, has caused the sort of teen-toking explosion about which Project SAM has been concerned. And Mason Tvert, an A64 proponent who’s now the director of communication for the Marijuana Policy Project, thinks he knows why.