Restrictive Pot Initiatives Complicate Colorado Cannabis Reform

(DENVER) - On the heals of historic grassroots victories in the state legislature, Colorado cannabis patients and advocates are confused and surprised by an attempt to undermine these victories by a conservative faction of national and local drug policy reform groups.

According to the Denver Post, members of the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, SAFER and Sensible developed 8 different versions of a ballot initiative and filed them with the Colorado Secretary of State on Thursday, May 19, 2011. The MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER initiative would create a Constitutional amendment for a marijuana distribution system controlled by law enforcement (see REPORT).

This filing comes as a surprise to other cannabis reform groups in Colorado. Members of the Legalize2012 Campaign, who have been working on their own ballot initiative language for over a year, were shown a draft of one of the MPP/DPA initiatives only a few days ago. The MPP/DPA/SAFER/Sensible alliance never indicated that they were on the verge of filing. On the contrary, they had seemed open to listening to ideas from other groups in the state.

Westword editor Patricia Calhoun had recently agreed to moderate a community policy debate on June 22 amongst all the cannabis reform groups that were considering running ballot initiatives in 2012.

The event was to be called "The Great Legalization Debates of 2012 - Part One", scheduled for June 22 at Casselman's Bar and Venue in Downtown Denver. The debate was conceptualized by the Cannabis Policy Institute as a way to start to bring the cannabis movement together in Colorado to search for common ground in future cannabis policy reform and 2012 ballot initiatives.

Mason Tvert of SAFER had agreed to participate, and had just sent an email to Legalize2012.com on May 16, 2011 that said, "I can't stop thinking about how exciting and impactful it would be if we were able to join forces and move forward together. It would be such a huge catalyst for the movement, and we could really make things happen."

Given Tvert's letter on Monday, Laura Kriho of the Legalize2012.com Campaign and the Cannabis Therapy Institute was very surprised to hear that they had filed the initiatives today. "I'm not sure why they did this without telling anybody. Even the legislature gave us more notice to comment on their proposed legislation than they did. It really shows their bad faith. This is the same strategy that MPP/DPA used in 1998 in Colorado when they wrote Amendment 20. Their goal is to divide and ignore the grassroots, and win an initiative no matter what the initiative says."

Constitutional Right to Privacy Should be Upheld

According to the May 12 draft, the proposed Constitutional amendment mimics HB 10-1284, a law created by the Colorado legislature in 2010 that gutted Colorado's medical marijuana law. HB 10-1284 took control of the medical marijuana program out of the health agency and gave it to law enforcement within the Department of Revenue.

Senator Chris Romer (D-Denver) who authored the HB 10-1284, said the bill was designed to put 80% of the dispensaries in Colorado out of business. Many grassroots cannabis reform groups, legislators, and attorneys in Colorado opposed HB 10-1284 and lobbied aggressively against it for almost 2 years.

The bill attacked patient privacy and removed Constitutional protection from caregivers and patients. The bill created a whole new branch of law enforcement dedicated to cannabis. The MMC model has been subjected to increasingly expensive over-regulation, and many of the smaller businesses have been forced out.

The DOR has been adversarial to the medical marijuana program from the beginning. They have denied licenses without good cause, harassed applicants, held secret meetings, and are on the verge of going online with a massive Patient and Medicine Tracking Database and Surveillance System that will track every seed and gram in the state.

The DOR has not granted one license to an MMC applicant, in almost a year since they started accepting applications. Why does MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER trust the DOR so much and want to give them total control over cannabis in Colorado?

"I would at least wait until the Department of Revenue had issued one license to an MMC applicant successfully, before I submitted an initiative law that let the DOR run a whole new marijuana program," says Kriho.

No Limits on Booze but More Scrutiny on Cannabis

Ironically, Denver conservative cannabis group SAFER has always espoused the belief that marijuana should be treated like alcohol. But the MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER (MDSS) initiative treats cannabis much stricter than alcohol.

By limiting cannabis consumers to one ounce at a time, unlike alcohol with no limits, the MDSS initiative will ensure greater scrutiny on cannabis consumers than any alcohol consumer ever had. Currently, two ounces or less of cannabis is a "petty offense" in Colorado and results in only a ticket and $100 fine.

Medical patients are also allowed to have two ounces under Amendment 20. Creating a Constitutional standard that only one ounce is safe will only cause confusion.

THCF Medical garden, Portland, OR.

A one-ounce standard will also require the Department of Revenue to convert their massive Patient and Medicine Tracking Database and Surveillance System to a massive database for all cannabis and cannabis users, to track how much cannabis is bought and sold. The MDSS initiative does contain some language that attempts to restrict the Department of Revenue from gathering names of cannabis consumers, but this provision is not well-worded, and may be thrown out as unenforceable.

The MDSS Initiative would also allow for and set Constitutional standards for driving discrimination, employment discrimination, and tenant discrimination of marijuana users. The MDSS Initiative makes "Driving Under the Influence of Marijuana" a new Constitutional crime, completely wiping away victories scored by patient advocates to kill a THC/DUI bill in the state legislature this year.

Some of the 8 versions of the MDSS Initiative reportedly also allow a 15% excise tax, which will create more funding for the Department of Revenue marijuana police force. The MMED already has a budget larger than the entire Colorado Bureau of Investigation, all funded by the medical marijuana industry.

Do we really want to be handing over a 15% per ounce extra tax to buy more handcuffs?

This initiative exacerbates the situation created by HB 1284: one group of cannabis consumers is now paying to prosecute, harass and discriminate against the other group of cannabis consumers. Good pot users paying to jail bad pot users. We have seen with the bloated MMED budget that all their money is going to investigate, track and harass medical cannabis consumers. Do we really want to unleash this law enforcement force onto all cannabis users? This is not is "legalization".

The lines have been clearly set now on the division of cannabis reform policy in Colorado. The MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER initiative has chosen to ignore any local efforts for a real legalization ballot initiative in favor of writing an initiative that appeals to law enforcement.

They have decided that they don't want to work with anyone else in the state and are unwilling to compromise on their language. They have decided that instead of helping to fix the flaws in Amendment 20, which they wrote, they would amend the Colorado Constitution with another unworkable, poorly-written law with little support among long-time activists.

History of MPP/DPA in Colorado

This unilateral move by MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER cast doubts that any cannabis law reform ballot initiative in Colorado would be successful. These conservative groups seem to want to duplicate the strategy of dividing and ignoring the progressive grassroots, as MPP/DPA did in their medical marijuana campaigns of 1997/98 nationwide.

Many people don't know that billionaire currency manipulator George Soros funded Amendment 20 in 1997/98 through the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), headed by Rob Kampia in DC, and the Open Society Institute, headed by Ethan Nadelmann.

Nadelmann now works with the Drug Policy Alliance, based in New York and California, but also funded by Soros. Bill Zimmerman and Dave Fratello of Americans for Medical Rights, based in Santa Monica, CA were hired to run the 1997/98 medical marijuana ballot initiative campaigns in 4 states.

Dividing Grassroots Support

Then, their strategy was to ignore and divide grassroots support for cannabis reform by introducing initiatives that competed with initiatives sponsored by local groups in Colorado, Maine, Alaska and Washington, D.C.

In DC, MPP submitted a competing initiative to local ACT/UP medical marijuana initiative, after the locals had already collected thousands of signatures. AIDS activist Steve Michael literally died while fighting MPPs plans to destroy the ACT/UP medical initiative. A few weeks before his death, he was attacking them in the press: "Over my dead body: California firm admits plans to run own Initiative in DC" (http://www.levellers.org/dc1.htm)

Cannabis activists statewide are shocked by the MPP/DPA/Sensible/SAFER strategy of refusing to work with any of the other activist groups working on statewide cannabis initiatives.

MPP/DPA Does Not Support Past Initiatives

After the signatures for Amendment 20 were collected in 1998, Americans for Medical Rights disconnected their phone and took down the website.

MPP/DPA has not provided a dime to help support Amendment 20, or any of the other laws they have written in other states. Every attorney in Colorado agrees that Amendment 20 was poorly-written, but MPP/DPA has not supported efforts to fix their law through the legislature or the legal system.

They amended the Constitution with what they called a "symbolic" amendment in 2000, despite the concerns of local activists. They will do the same thing again in 2012. We will be left with another unworkable and poorly-written law in the Colorado Constitution.

I invite you to please email MPP/DPA/SAFER/Sensible and ask them to withdraw their language and participate in the community policy debate, schedule for June 22 at Casselman's, to be moderated by Patricia Calhoun. Tell them that you are appalled that they have chosen not to try to work with other local activists, and that you will not be supporting their organizations.

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Thomas J. Hillgardner May 23, 2011 8:50 pm (Pacific time)

Once upon a time "Ronald Reagan for President" was the punch line to a joke. Nobody is laughing anymore. Moreover, people on the extreme ends of a debate are effective in defining the parameters of the conversation. If the extremists were moderates, the moderates would look like extremists. That's politics. So don't be so quick to condemn those who are calling for cannabis to be regulated the same as tea.

Duncan20903 May 21, 2011 1:40 pm (Pacific time)

So Nick, since the only thing quoted from Ms. Kriho was obviously personal opinion, you must think she's lying or mistaken in the matter. That's absurd, I can accept the fact that she's representing her own opinion correctly. Why would you doubt it? Ad Hominem fallacies are very rarely worthy of being given credibility by those who make their decisions based on actual facts and reasoned analysis. Launching an ad hominem based on a person's opinion are at the opposite end of the spectrum that the rare exceptions.

Nick May 20, 2011 7:11 pm (Pacific time)

Sorry, but you lose credibility when you quote Laura Kriho or CTI. They're a joke and they rarely understand... In fact she is frequently wrong regarding marijuana law and policy in Colorado. The only patients and industry employees that gravitate toward CTI are the extremists that break the laws because of their beliefs. While I can respect their beliefs, and agree 1000% that marijuana should be completely legal, it's not sound strategy. Laura Kriho and CTI are a joke. She just doesn't get politics.

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