Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Colorado Voters Appear Reluctant to Expand Use of Recreational Marijuana

In the recent DU/Crossley Center poll, 53 percent of Colorado voters said no to a question asking if they wanted recreational marijuana sales expanded in Colorado. 

This does not mean voters are ready to delegalize recreational sales, but a majority says they are opposed to further expansion. Democrats are the most willing to see recreational marijuana sales expanded. Important votes on recreational marijuana use are taking place in Democratic strongholds of Denver and Pueblo.

Peter Roper reported in the Pueblo Chieftain (11-5-16): 
Colorado voters may have reached their limit on recreational marijuana, according to a new statewide poll that shows 53 percent of likely voters don’t want recreational pot sales expanded, while 35 percent do.
That’s not the same question that state voters faced in 2012, when 55 percent voted to legalize recreational marijuana.
But this latest survey could be a sign that voters are now viewing pot differently, said pollster Floyd Ciruli, who did the survey of 550 voters over the Halloween weekend.
“It’s not the question that Pueblo voters are facing on Nov. 8 — to repeal the licenses of recreational pot businesses — but we may be seeing signs that public support for recreational marijuana has hit its high point,” Ciruli said.
“But everyone is watching what happens in Pueblo because of the possible repeal of marijuana licenses,” Ciruli said.

2 comments:

Robert said...

Hilarious -- Ciruli quoting Ciruli. Yes, you certainly glommed onto the media's silly, manufactured conceit "that public support for recreational marijuana has hit its high point", but you, a doctor from St. Mary Corwin, that soccer mom, and the rest of Pueblo's diehard prohibitionists are more of an echo chamber than any sort of nascent repudiation of regulated sales of cannabis on the part of Pueblo, much less society as a whole. Pueblo supported adoption of Amendment 64, before seeing the lack of harms (the liars continue to confabulate) and reaping the substantial benefits; Questions 200 and 300 were nothing more than prohibitionist fantasy -- both were trounced by the voters!

Colorado's parasites are clamoring for more of the revenue from cannabis and they will get it, but the costs are not social costs of cannabis, which are nothing more than prohibtionist lies, but the cost of their parasitism to us all.

I doubt the validity of your poll, but if it reflects anything, it is Coloradans' unwillingness to confront reality, which is broadly evident in our politics, our attitudes towards education, and in our policies regarding cannabis. Coloradans thought they legalized cannabis in 2012; to this day, they have no idea that the Colorado General Assembly and Gov. Hack reinstituted felony penalties for cannabis immediately thereafter, because no one told them. SB13-250 made cannabis up to a level 1 drug felony, all sales across most of the State felonies, and the cultivation of just seven (7) cannabis plants for personal use a felony (see C.R.S. 18-18-406). There are no felonies for alcohol under Colorado's Liquor Code and were we to regulate cannabis "in a manner similar to alcohol", there should be none for cannabis under our Controlled Substances Act (our statute against the felony of contributing to the delinquency of minors is part of Title 18, Article 6, "Offenses involving the family relations"). Every time someone purchases cannabis in, say, Lamar, someone commits a felony to provide some to them -- this is completely insane public policy, and you should not be involved in lending any kind of support to it.

Robert said...

P.S. I just got told last night (at the victory celebration for Denver's Question 300, the intiative to permit the public consumption of cannabis in businesses that set aside space for the purpose) by a self-styled documentarian that I must be a conspiracy-theorist for supposing that cannabis is still a felony under State law; prohibionists may rejoice that the misperception of our recent history is so complete that only a handful of activists and a number of lawyers know the truth.