International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2018/Spring 2019 | Page 34

Colorado: Cannabis Legalization and the Challenge of Organized Crime
having become sufficiently diversified, they have been able to forestall legislative
changes and have taken opportunistic advantage of the opioids epidemic that is
currently raging across the whole of the United States for the purposes of reviving
the heroin market. Doing so has largely offset the losses caused by the legal cannabis
sector’s capture of a market share.
This is all the more so given that, despite rising production power and the
decline in prices that it has caused, a significant parallel market for cannabis in
plant form still exists that caters to internal demand (poor people and young people
under twenty-one years of age) and external demand (prohibitionist states),
and also given that the cocaine market—the biggest illegal market in the United
States—is beginning to grow once more. When it comes to small-scale crime, another
phenomenon appears to be a significant shift in activities, as is attested to
by the increasing figures for robberies, burglaries, and dealing in stolen vehicles.
However, it seems that Colorado’s public authorities have become aware
of this deteriorating situation. The Democratic governor of the state, John Hickenlooper,
has decided to revisit aspects of regulation that are likely too liberal,
including those that have favored the emergence of very significant gray and black
markets for marijuana. For example, Colorado recently repealed provisions that
allowed medical cannabis users, of which there are approximately ninety thousand,
to cultivate up to ninety-nine plants, setting the limit at twelve instead. And
more and more municipalities, most recently the capital, Denver, have made the
decision to limit the number of plants that can be grown to twelve per household,
whereas before the law authorized six plants for each adult over the age of twentyone.
This desire to rein things in conveys the limitations and contradictions of a
regulatory policy that probably underestimated the resilience of criminal organizations.
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