The Past, Present and Future of Amendment 64 by Erin Hiatt
No one can argue that November 6, 2012 wasn’ t an absolutely historic day. As Steve Horwitz, owner of Ganja Gourmet, said regarding Amendment 64’ s passage“ The cat is out of the bag. The whole world is aware that Colorado and Washington have legalized marijuana.”
But as Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said to the Washington Post on November 7, 2012,“ Don’ t break out the Cheetos or Goldfish too quickly.” As it turns out passing an amendment, even one as promising and seemingly straightforward as Amendment 64, is not as clear-cut as it may seem.
There are still many unknowns in how this amendment will be implemented. As they say, Rome wasn’ t built in a day and neither was the passage of this amendment.
PAST
The foundations for this amendment were laid out all the way back in January 2005, shortly after college students at the University of Colorado Boulder and Colorado State died from accidental alcohol overdoses. In response to those tragedies, Mason Tvert, who acts currently as the Director of Communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, cofounded SAFER( Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation). The goal of the organization was, in Mr. Tvert’ s words, to“ highlight the relative safety of marijuana compared to alcohol and to get people thinking about the fact that we have laws and policies that steer people toward drinking with excessive penalties for choosing to use marijuana instead.”
SAFER’ s first undertaking was student referendums at UC Boulder and CSU in the spring of 2005. The objective of these referendums were to persuade the administrations of the colleges to make university penalties for using marijuana no greater than those for alcohol, and they were successful. So successful, in fact, that they ran an initiative in the city of Denver called“ Initiated Question 1-100” that would legalize adult possession and they were once again successful, making Denver the first U. S. city to remove adult possession penalties. Meeting voter approval at 54-46 percent, however, was still not enough to persuade the lawmakers of Denver and they refused to implement the passage.
46 April / May
So in 2007, citizens for a SAFER Denver again qualified for a ballot initiative of the same name with the intent of making adult( 21 or older) possession the“ lowest law enforcement priority” and this was also approved on November 6, 2007.
Despite the fact that voters in Colorado had made imminently clear their desire to decriminalize adult marijuana possession, Hickenlooper remains a steadfast contrarian.
On January 4, 2012, after Amendment 64 The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol qualified for the November ballot with 90,466 valid signatures, the governor stated to the Denver Post on September 13, 2012,“ Colorado is known for many good things- marijuana should not be one of them.”
Mr. Tvert, co-author of the amendment, was quick to point out the governor’ s hypocrisy in the September 13th Denver Post, saying“ After building a personal fortune by selling alcohol to Coloradans he is suddenly concerned about the health of his citizens and the message being sent to children. We certainly hope he is aware that alcohol actually kills people.”
Amendment 64 passed on November 6, 2012 with 55 percent of the vote, receiving endorsements from a collection of groups and individuals as varied as evangelist Pat Robertson to judges and unions. On December 10, 2012, Hickenlooper signed the bill into law, making it legal for adults over 21 to possess one ounce or less and to grow six plants.“ Keep in mind,” said Amendment 64’ s other co-author and attorney Brian Vicente of Vicente Sederberg,“ that Amendment 64 is just that. An amendment. It is henceforth and forever in our State Constitution.”
PRESENT
Of the amendment’ s passage, Vicente stated“ Colorado has really, pretty much on every level embraced moving toward regulation as opposed to trying to scale this back.” So what could possibly be in the way now? The voters have approved it and it’ s legal. But there are some caveats.
First it’ s the federal policies, where marijuana is still illegal. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a press conference on February 26, 2013 that there is not a current plan in place regarding legalization in Colorado and Washington but that they would have one“ soon.” Mr. Tvert is“ hopeful that the Department of Justice will work with states to arrive at systems in which marijuana is legal and regulated similarly to alcohol while also respecting federal interests. They’ ve shown no signs of thinking that we shouldn’ t be moving forward.”
Mr. Horwitz agrees, saying regarding the oversight of dispensaries that“ the state put together such strict and clear guidelines, I believe the government is satisfied with what the state did and is allowing the state of Colorado to regulate medical marijuana.”
After Hickenlooper signed the bill into law he appointed a Task Force assigned with creating a set of recommendations to provide to the Colorado Legislature who will, in turn, make some of them, or none of them if they so choose, into law. These legalization quandaries are composed of issues as varied as licensing fees for retail establishments, packaging, training of law enforcement to recognize and test stoned drivers, and most importantly, how to create a regulatory structure that does not run afoul of federal law.
Rob Corry of Corry & Associates said,“ The Task Force is made up of 25 people appointed by the governor and the governor opposed amendment 64.” Brian Vicente added“ the whole purpose of the Task Force was to provide cover for the Legislature to address these issues.” The task force released their recommendations to the Legislature at the beginning of March. Vicente continued,“ And so you have this diverse group of stakeholders on the Task Force, many of whom were not supportive of Amendment 64, and some of those suggested regulations make sense and a lot of them don’ t make sense and reflect a misunderstanding of marijuana laws and other laws.”
The stated goals of Amendment 64 were to eliminate the underground market( which has thrived under prohibition) and to raise revenue, primarily for Colorado schools. The list of recommendations taken from the Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol website are pretty common sense but do contain some rather prohibitive curiosities. The points below were found on www. regulatemarijuana. org: