Ten years ago voters in Colorado approved a ballot measure called Amendment 64 that legalized cannabis for adult, recreational use. This not only created a booming avenue of tourism for Denver – which became the Las Vegas of legal weed – but sparked a domino effect of similar reforms across the US, eventually leading 19 states (and DC) to legalize recreational marijuana, and increase the number of medically legal states to 37.
Since then, Colorado has racked up $13.2bn in cannabis sales, which has gleaned $2.2bn in taxes and fees for the state.
Recently Joe Biden announced he would be pardoning all federal marijuana offenses, encouraged governors to do the same, and asked for a review of its schedule 1 status, where it is placed alongside heroin and LSD as having “no medicinal value”.
It has been a decade of remarkable change. Instead of birthing a huge new American industry, back in 2012, many conservative pundits and politicians predicted legal weed would plunge Denver into a post-apocalyptic chaos.
Former Colorado governor and current US senator John Hickenlooper – who, like nearly every other Colorado politician, strongly opposed legalization – confessed that time had proved his anxieties to be unfounded.
“Today, I go into the US Senate on a regular basis and say that we can prove that since we legalized marijuana there has been no increase in teenage experimentation, no increase in driving while high,” Hickenlooper said at a recent event marking the anniversary and citing a state health survey of 40,000 participants. “Just to be clear, I smoked pot when I was 16 … and I feel pretty darn sure now that [legalization] is a much better societal decision than what I grew up in.”
As Denver mayor in the 2000s, Hickenlooper aggressively opposed civic marijuana reforms and was labeled a hypocrite for making his fortune as a brewpub owner. His replacement in 2011, Mayor Michael Hancock, was arguably even more anti-cannabis, labeling it a “gateway drug”, and predicted: “We will lose our attractiveness to companies, employers who want to come to our state.”
However, he began his opening remarks at last Tuesday’s celebration with the joke “it’s great to be here at the losers rally for Amendment 64.”
After explaining his opposition to the measure at the time – citing addiction issues in his own family – he said “I was wrong 10 years ago. I’m a convert today. This can be done right and responsibly.”
Hancock also boasted that “today I am the chair of a national mayors committee for sensible cannabis policy. I have testified in Congress that it’s time to legalize marijuana.”
Similarly Hickenlooper called for federal marijuana reforms, and announced the creation of a marijuana taskforce in the Senate to mirror the one created in Colorado with Amendment 64, in preparation for federal legalization.
“We knew it was a matter of when, not if,” the current Colorado governor, Jared Polis, said. “It’s always exciting as an elected official to be riding the wave of history.”
Polis was a congressman at the time of Amendment 64, and a strong advocate for legalization, known for once flying a hemp flag on the US Capitol dome. Polis is currently campaigning not only for re-election as governor, but for the federal passage of a banking bill that would allow cannabis businesses access to loans, bank accounts, tax deductions (currently they have none) and interstate commerce, something advocates have tried, and failed, to pass for nearly a decade.
“When I was a member of Congress we started a cannabis caucus and only had a few members, and the safe banking bill only had a few sponsors,” Polis told the Guardian. “Now it’s passed the house with a strong bipartisan majority and it likely has 60 votes in the Senate.”
Before Amendment 64, even progressive Democrats like Barack Obama were mocking the idea of legalization with jokes and eyerolls. Fast forward a decade and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, stands in a field of hemp in a campaign ad, boasting that hemp could replace tobacco as a Kentucky cash crop.
When Gallup first began polling on this issue in 1969, only 12% of Americans supported legalization of marijuana. At the time of Amendment 64’s passage in 2012, about half the country was in favor of the change. As of 2021, that number climbed to 68%. Another Gallup poll shows 16% of Americans regularly consume the plant, nearly double from 2013.
But not everyone is happy.
Kevin Sabet, former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy adviser and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said that people like Hickenlooper and Hancock who have flip-flopped on this issue “are playing politics”.
“The legalization of marijuana has harmed public health and public safety, a point few supporters of legalization are willing to acknowledge,” Sabet said in an email to the Guardian. “Legalization has also allowed another addiction-for-profit industry to take root in America.”
Sabet blames marijuana legalization for other drug law reforms, such as the decriminalization of psilocybin in Denver, personal use of a variety of drugs in Oregon, and of opioids in Canada, saying “those who initially supported the legalization of marijuana in Colorado likely didn’t expect to be voting on the legalization of psychedelics 10 years later.”
Decriminalization is different from legalization: it only removes penalties for possession of drugs, unlike legalization, which establishes a commercial framework for production, transportation, sale and taxation of substances.
While full federal legalization often appears inevitable to advocates, legal marijuana is still a bogeyman in conservative politics.
Dr Mehmet Oz recently attacked his opponent for Senate in Pennsylvania in a campaign video, picturing Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman with a bong coming out of his head, following his support for legalization and his pardoning those with low-level marijuana convictions. And if you watch Fox News long enough you’re sure to see stories about marijuana psychosis, marijuana being more addictive than alcohol, or, Tucker Carlson’s favorite, blaming mass shootings on legal weed.
It’s true that in the early days of legalization in Colorado, edible products had inconsistent dosages and were far more potent than most cannabis newbies could reasonably handle, leading to Maureen Dowd freaking out in a Denver hotel room and emergency rooms filled with panicked tourists every night.
Fearing a surge in underage use, Governor Hickenlooper launched his “Don’t Be a Lab Rat” PSA in 2014, installing large metal cages with a hamster water-bottle inside near schools, intending to illustrate the lack of science around THCs impact on developing brains.
Edibles have since been regulated for consistency in Colorado, and are now capped at 10mg of THC a dose. And while underage use remains higher in legalized states than prohibition states, it never increased following legalization.
However, concerns around high THC products, regulation of consumption lounges and equity in the industry for women, people of color and low-income entrepreneurs, remain for those on both sides of this issue.
When asked whether the wave of legalization will continue, even Sabet said: “Given the industry’s financial incentives to commercialize marijuana nationwide, I expect them to continue pressuring lawmakers to liberalize our federal marijuana laws.”
But he added: “I imagine at some point we will look back and say ‘what were we thinking?’ and begin to reverse our loose regulations on marijuana like we have for tobacco. No one would’ve imagined 40 years ago we would have banned smoking from restaurants and airplanes – yet here we are. American attitudes can change quickly.”
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