Thread: Colorado Politicians Ignore Major Pot Problems

Colorado Politicians Ignore Major Pot Problems

• Gazette (Colorado Springs)
• 6:45 am January 8, 2018
• 2 comments

Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Cory Gardner don’t seem to care much about the toll recreational pot imposes on Colorado. Each reacted with righteous indignation to the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Obama administration’s lax pot policies.

“It’s not a black market anymore. It’s not a criminal activity, and we would hate for the state to go backwards,” Democrat Hickenlooper said Thursday, expressing concern about the potential for more federal enforcement against our state’s illegal marijuana industry.

Republican Gardner asserted his duty Thursday to protect the state’s “right” to sanction, host and profit from an industry that flagrantly violates federal law to the detriment of traffic safety, federal lands, children, and neighboring states that are burdened by Colorado pot. Never mind that even the Obama policy emphasized a need for federal enforcement against drugged driving, damage to kids and neighboring states, and the presence of cartels and pot on federal land. Somehow, Colorado has a right to avoid these federal enforcement measures even the Obama administration wanted.

Colorado politicians need to stop pandering and start leading, which means telling the truth about the severely negative consequences of big commercial pot.

Hickenlooper, Gardner and other politicians tell us everything is rosy, but that’s not what we hear from educators, cops, social workers, doctors, drug counselors, parents and others in the trenches of the world’s first anything goes marijuana free-for-all. It is not what we see in the streets.

If Hickenlooper and Gardner cared to lead on this issue, they would tell the world about the rate of pot-involved traffic fatalities that began soaring in their state in direct correlation with the emergence of legal recreational pot and Big Marijuana. They would talk about Colorado’s status as a national leader in growth of the homelessness, which all major homeless shelter operators attribute to commercialized, recreational pot.

They would talk about the difficulty in keeping marijuana from crossing boarders into states that don’t allow it. They would spread the words of classroom educators and resource officers who say pot consumption among teens is out of control.

Honest leaders would talk about illegal grow operations invading neighborhoods and public lands. They would stop selling false, positive impressions about a failed policy for the sake of “respecting the will of voters” who made a mistake. They would not follow public perception but would lead it in a truthful direction.

Hickenlooper says legalization has eliminated illegal pot in Colorado, which is laughable to men and women who enforce the law and talk to us.

El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder speaks of more than 550 illegal rural home-grow operations in El Paso County alone.

Mayor John Suthers — Colorado’s former U.S. attorney, attorney general, district prosecutor and state director of corrections — speaks of hundreds of illegal pot operations in Colorado Springs he hopes to raid. We could go on with countless accounts of leading law enforcers who describe illegal pot activity that exceeds limits of departmental budgets and personnel.

That’s the small stuff, relative to the massive black market Colorado’s legalization attracts to federal property.

Dave Condit, deputy forest and grassland supervisor for the Pike-San Isabel and Cimarron-Comanche National Grasslands, recently accompanied Forest Service officers on the raid of a Mexican cartel’s major grow operation west of Colorado Springs. It was among at least 17 busts of cartel operations in the past 18 months. He describes the type of operation mostly based in Mexico, before legalization made Colorado more attractive. Condit said the agency lacks resources to make a dent in the additional cartel activity in the region’s two national forests.

“It was eye opening to put on the camouflage and sneak through the woods at 4 in the morning,” Condit told The Gazette’s editorial board Friday. “I had no idea the scope of these plantations. These are huge farms hidden in the national forests. The cartels de-limb the trees, so there is some green left on them. Other trees are cut down. They fertilize the plants extensively, and not all these fertilizers and chemicals are legal in this area.

“This is different than anything we have experienced in the past. These massive plantations are not the work of someone moving in from out of state who’s going to grow a few plants or even try to grow a bunch of plants and sell them. These are massive supported plantations, with massive amounts of irrigation. The cartels create their own little reservoirs for water. These operations are guarded with armed processors. They have little buildings on site. The suspects we have captured on these grows have all been Mexican nationals.”

Condit said the black market invading Colorado’s national forests has grown so large the entire budget for the Pike and San Isabel forests would not cover the costs of removing and remediating cartel grows in the forests he helps supervise.

“There’s a massive amount of resource damage that has to be mitigated,” Condit said. “You’ve got facilities and structures that have to be deconstructed. We would need to bring in air support to get materials out of there. There are tens of thousands of plants that have to be destroyed.”

Condit hopes the Colorado Legislature will channel a portion of marijuana proceeds to the Forest Service to help pay for closure and reclamation of cartel operations.

“For every plantation we find, there are many more,” Condit said.

Authorities captured only two cartel suspects in the raid Condit witnessed, and others escaped by foot into the woods.

“This operation had a huge stockpile of food. Hundreds and hundreds of giant cans (of food), and stacks of tortillas two or three people could not consume in months,” Condit said. “So it appeared they were planning to bring in a large crew for the harvest. I wouldn’t have thought you could hide something like that in our woods, but you can.”

Officers seized a marijuana stash and plants worth an estimated $35 million that morning. Merely destroying the plants presented a significant expense.

“Whether you’re a recreational shooter, a weekend camper, or you’re going to walk your dog in the woods, you should be concerned,” Condit said. “Some of these people have guns. If you stumble into $35 million worth of illegal plants, I’d be concerned. We are concerned for our own personnel.”

That’s not the view of either Colorado senator, other pandering politicians or the state’s top executive. From offices Washington and Denver, they see things quite differently.

“Now the people who cultivate marijuana, the people who process marijuana, the people who sell marijuana are not criminals,” Hickenlooper said Thursday. “They’re not committing any crimes.”

No black market? No crimes? Tell the cartels. They come to Marijuana Land in the wake of Amendment 64, wisely betting state leaders will defend their risky and unprecedented law no matter what. They count on politicians to look the other way.

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=36623?omhide=true

How many times have I heard on here by one ALIPAC poster that legalizing marijuana would end the drug cartels and their black market here in America?

YEP...NOTHING GOOD WILL COME OF THIS

Originally Posted by Beezer

YEP...NOTHING GOOD WILL COME OF THIS

You're right, greed and politics makes for a very bad mix.

Originally Posted by MW

How many times have I heard on here by one ALIPAC poster that legalizing marijuana would end the drug cartels and their black market here in America?

That's me you're talking about! And I totally stand by my statements and positions on legalization. The foreign cartels and others have been squatting pot operations on federal land in the forests for decades. You have to regulate the growers the same as the sellers and to my knowledge, it is still against the law to damage federal forests including to grow pot. Nothing about legalization in Colorado had anything to do with this problem on federal lands or in our federal forests, because Colorado's law did not legalize growing pot or anything else on federal land or in federal forests without a permit nor would any federal legalization do so either.

The argument you're making is we should ban all retail sales to end shop-lifting or we should ban sugar to reduce obesity. Americans are smarter than that.

The argument you're making is we should ban all retail sales to end shop-lifting or we should ban sugar to reduce obesity. Americans are smarter than that.

You're not even making sense. Sugar is not a schedule 1 drug and growing and consuming it is not against federal law.

Neither is marijuana a Schedule 1 Drug. That's a farce as farcical as if the fructose industry convinced Congress they would make more money selling their product if Congress would pass a law making cane sugar a Schedule 1 Drug due to the health hazards of sugar-driven obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure which WILL KILL you, and people are dying every day from eating sugar, or so the health experts claim. Sugar highs are turning children into basket cases with hyperactivity that gets them labeled ADHD and put on Ritalin to calm them down. Alcohol is more a Schedule 1 Drug than pot.

Americans are smarter than the bunk you and your anti-pot folks have pushing down the throats of Congress for decades running lives and families for several generations now.

States are taking it back and rightly so. Federal marijuana bans will be repealed, and rightly so. I've never used it but I have plenty of friends who have and there is absolutely nothing about it that should involve any federal official except to keep foreign shipments out of the United States so we can keep our money in the United States. States are fully capable of deciding how to regulate their pot sellers and growers and sales, just like they do alcohol. Feds can tax pot sales, I've no problem with that, and hope they pass the FairTax soon so they can do just that.

You're just being ridiculous now.

You Have to Be High to Be Mad at Jeff Sessions for Enforcing Federal Pot Laws


Kurt Schlichter
|
Posted: Jan 08, 2018 12:01 AM

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who himself seems stoned much of the time, just announced that his Department of Justice is going to start enforcing the federal laws against pot again despite a bunch of states doing a bong hit version of bombarding Ft. Sumpter. Look, no one is more annoyed than I am that Sessions decided to megapunt on his duties with regard to Democrat corruption and the Trump/Russia/Idiocy pseudo-scandal, but he doesn’t deserve all the grief he’s now getting from agitated hopheads and fussy libertarians – to the extent there’s a difference.

Dude, you’re like, harshing my buzz, dude.

Sessions is right not to allow a cheesy end-run around a clear set of laws just because reforming those laws is going to be hard. And no, it’s not “prosecutorial discretion” to refuse to enforce the law. What the legalize-it crowd wants is no prosecution, which is the oppositeof exercising discretion. The fact is that Sessions swore to enforce federal law. Pot is against federal law. It’s against federal law because our representatives in the House and Senate passed the laws and the president signed them. The people spoke. Remember that “I’m Just a Bill” Scholastic Rock cartoon?

Yeah, man, that cartoon bill looks like a big fattie joint. Heh heh. Dude, where are the Doritos?

See, if the people of this country pass a law thorough their elected representatives, it’s kind of central to the whole point of having a republic that the executive enforce those laws. You don’t cut corners by demanding that the executive branch just not enforce unpopular statutes. If you don’t like a law, here’s how you change it. You go pass another law that changes that law.

Heh heh, pass the dutchie, man!

Look, there’s a real problem here. Barack Obama’s DoJ didn’t help by kicking the dime bag down the road, and as a result lots of people are caught in this state-legal, federal-illegal twilight zone. These include casual stoners and investors in what one entrepreneur I spoke to insisted on referring to as “the cannabis space.”

Now, because people decided to try and game the system, we have confusion. Many states are asserting what I and many other folks think is their prerogative to make terrible decisions involving their own territory. Colorado is now pretty much Jamaica in the Rockies. My own state of California just legalized pot, as if we needed more lazy and boring people here.

States’ rights is an important concept – it’s sure nice to see some Democrats joining in on supporting it now for the first time since they last asserted states’ rights to enforce Jim Crow – but see, the federal government gets to control interstate commerce. Thanks to the liberals, the concept of “interstate commerce” is pretty much interchangeable with “any commerce.” Leaving aside the interstate movement of pot, the feds have a right, under the current understanding of the regulation of interstate commerce, to outlaw dope everywhere. But hey, if the vocal corps of hemp enthusiasts out there wants to advocate for the Supreme Court to overrule the expansive reading of the commerce clause in Wickard v. Filburn, I’ll totally inhale.

What’s a commerce clause, dude? Is it like, related to Santa?

The idea of changing the law by means of simply not enforcing it is worse than lazy – it’s undemocratic. There are a lot of people out there who think pot should stay illegal. No, they’re not hip or edgy, but they are American citizens and they have a right to be heard too. And they were heard – marijuana is against federal law. This idea disenfranchises them. I guess we tell them, “Well, we all decided that the law you support is uncool so we decided to repeal it without giving you a say.”

That’s not a democracy; that’s a dictatorship. Of course, good luck rousing the dazed and confused stormtroopers of the dictatorship of the pot-letariat from their moms’ couches and getting them to put down their bongs long enough to pick up their bayonets.

Huh? Hey, where’s my other shoe, dude?

The fact is that expecting Jeff Sessions to somehow provide us with an easy way around the Constitution by simply refusing to enforce a legitimately-passed law because some of usz don’t like it is obnoxious, and it’s a dangerous precedent. Actually, it’s not even a precedent. Barack Obama tried to do that with the so-called Dreamers, illegal aliens who ought to be dreaming of going back home. One of the many reasons WHY YOU GOT TRUMP was the sight of our Commander-in-Choom deciding, “Nah, I don’t like the law you got passed, so too bad.” Trump rightly refused to continue the charade, and threw the problem over to Congress, where it belongs.

Of course, Congress doesn’t want to deal with DACA, or dope, because these are controversial issues and it’s easier and safer to palm them off on Jeff Sessions, who doesn’t appear to be particularly busy anyway. But that’s a cop-out, and even people who think we ought to let dope smokin’ morons stumble about free and unhassled by the Man should demand that reform happen the right way – by a change in the law enacted through our democratic processes.

Look, I despise pot. It’s use for medical purposes aside, recreational dope smoking makes you tiresome and slothlike, instead of witty and suave like wine drinking does. Despite what the hemp-loving weirdos will tell you, it has serious health risks. Plus, science has established that marijuana is a gateway drug that inevitably leads to reggae – a musical genre whose listeners are too high to even notice that there is actually only one reggae song and that the musicians simply give it different titles to fool the fans.

Wait, like, reggae is what?

But there are strong arguments for letting states evaluate the costs and benefits and handle this issue themselves. One size never fits all; maybe Alabama has no use for kush, but California does since it’s a lost cause anyway. States should decide this for themselves, even if their decision is one I or you or others not in those states disapprove of. Oh, and by the way GOP, millennials hate you, but maybe getting behind moving these choices back to the states where they belong is a way to show them that our conservative principles are not completely at odds with their views. So as a matter of conservative policy and politics, it seems obvious that the feds should not remain in the position of having to try to play prosecutorial whack-a-mole with those “in the cannabis space.”

A lot of Americans in a lot of states want change, and they have a right to it if they can convince enough of their fellow citizens to go along with it. That’s the way to do it, not this borderline fascist notion that the executive gets to arbitrarily post ex facto veto laws that really loud, vocal groups disapprove of.

Congress, fix this. It’s your job. Stop blaming Sessions for doing his. He’s screwed up enough that there’s still plenty to blame him for.

Righteous, dude!

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurt...draft-n2431291

Debate is fine. Attacks are not fine.

Thank you friends.