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Legislation concerning the regulation of pot businesses in Colorado is slowly moving forward. The Colorado governor’s Task Force has delivered a lengthy set of recommendations to our state Legislature, to be wrestled with and set into law by May of 2013, and regulations concerning pot usage and growing are supposedly to be voted into state law by July of 2013. It’s legal to possess an ounce for recreational use in Colorado, but it may be mid 2014 before retail outlets appear, so there’s nowhere to buy. It’s legal to grow six plants, but it remains illegal to purchase seeds.
Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Representative Jared Polis of Colorado have introduced national legislation to get pot out of the grips of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Justice Department, allowing it to be taxed and regulated like alcohol. Cannabis has been legalized for medical use in 19 states, with more states coming along, handing back some measure of power to people for a plant that has been allowed to load prison systems with pointless and costly incarcerations.
The Boulder County situation with licensing of medical marijuana grow operations and dispensaries is in flux, with County officials waiting to see what Denver does. Boulder County will probably apply the same zoning district location limits on recreational businesses that the county adopted in 2010 for medical marijuana businesses.
Lastly, former presidents of Brazil, Switzerland and Columbia are urging the US to have a serious discussion of counter-narcotics policies in the wake of votes in Colorado and Washington state which legalized recreational use. American public opinion is changing, even as the US continues to press Latin American nations for tough enforcement of anti-drug trafficking laws. Forty years and a trillion and a half of our tax dollars wasted on our failed drug war have only increased demand. The global narcotics accords, the “Vienna Accords”, signed onto by 188 nations and approved in 1961, 1971, and 1988, are not being followed in Portugal, Switzerland or the Netherlands. These former presidents are saying time the nations of this world to come together and have a talk. Attitudes have changed!
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