Marijuana Use Has Increased in Colorado: Study

Colorado emerged as the state with the second-highest percentage of regular marijuana users as it began legalizing the drug, according to a new national study. The Denver Post reports the study by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found about 1 out of 8 Colorado residents older than 12 had used marijuana in the past month. Only Rhode Island topped Colorado in the percentage of residents who reported using pot as often, according to the study.

The study averaged state-specific data over two-year periods. It found that, for the 2011-2012 period, 10.4 percent of Colorado residents 12 and older said they had used pot in the month before being surveyed. That number jumped to 12.7 percent in the 2012-2013 data. That means about 530,000 people in Colorado use marijuana at least once a month, according to the results. Nationally, about 7.4 percent of people 12 and older reported monthly marijuana use. That's an increase of about 4 percent.

The survey is among the first to quantify pot use in Colorado since late 2012, when voters approved legal pot use and possession for those over 21. But the survey did not analyze data from 2014, when recreational marijuana shops opened, which means it is not a good indication of the effect of commercial sales on marijuana use.

"I don't think this tells us about the long-term impacts of legalization," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Mark Kleiman, who studies marijuana policy. The number of medical marijuana patients in Colorado rose over the same time period, so the results are not surprising, Kleiman said.

He told The Post that researchers will have a better idea about pot use in the first state to legalize recreational sales of the drug once they can focus on data showing how many people use pot daily.

You make my point. It illustrates that prohibitionist don't care about the original Constitution. They'll use whatever is convenient to carry out their agenda.

You are being deliberately obtuse. The fact that Liberal judges and liberal lawyers use this socialist tool to make their legal claims DOES NOT ESTABLISH that stopping drugs is not constitutional.

I regard it as completely constitutional. Drugs are a foreign chemical warfare threat against the American populace. They are the very means by which the British and then Japan brought China to it's knees.

Nobody has a "right" to do drugs. Arguments that doing drugs are a "right" are utter nonsense.

No, it is not authorized under the 'defense clause'. Congress has not claimed such and the Courts have never ruled that way. If you support fedgov control over intrastate marijuana regulation, you support Wickard.

Yes, it *IS* authorized under the defense clause, and a sh*t I do not give whether the courts or congress has said so or not. Given how lazy and illogical they are, why should they lift a finger to make new case law under the Defense clause when they can point to "Wickard" with no additional effort? They will wring whatever they can out of it until they can't.

The fact of the matter is that drug interdiction is perfectly constitutional (George Washington himself ordered the US forces to thwart the Whiskey rebellion.) and whether or not the courts and congress point to the wrong clause to justify it is immaterial to the fact that it *IS* justified under the Defense clause of the US Constitution.

I think defending the nation is within the scope of privileges and immunities.

That is an interpretation "privileges and immunities" worse than the current thinking on the Commerce Clause. It is a very good thing that what you think is of no consequence.

What you apparently do not understand is the role of Natural Law competition among the States with which to determine the correct set of actions and statutes. Some will liberalize their drug laws. Others will tighten them. There will be smuggling across State lines. The States will then be forced to consider an Amendment granting the Federal government narrowly defined powers to regulate or prohibit drug trafficking. That's how it works. In the mean time, we'll all learn a lot about the damage liberalization does while the laboratory of Federalism will point out and develop the most cost effective means to deal with drugs altering perception or cognitive function.

Now I'm no drug libertarian by any means. Personally, I prefer executing people who sell drugs to children or commit a crime resulting in grievous bodily injury while intoxicated. Simultaneously I prefer legalizing drug resorts with the owners equally responsible for the consequences of intoxication outside their property. The point is that somebody other than government must be accountable for people who deliberately take actions to put themselves in a state of mind for which they cannot control what they do. That somebody had best be able to afford the scope of those consequences or pay the ultimate price. No more sugar-coating the reality of intoxication.

Now some might not prefer those rules for their State, to which I say 'go ahead and live in a State placing no value upon sobriety.' Let that State go to hell and see what happens. Federalism limits the scope of such damages and provides the object lessons in bad governance for all to witness while uplifting good ideas and their progenitors with them. Such is how we get better statesmen.

Hence, I am an unalterable opponent of your incontinent reliance upon the one-stop shop for one-size-fits-all, unionized, lawyerized, bureaucratic influence-peddling police state that has become the District of Criminals.

The fact that Liberal judges and liberal lawyers use this socialist tool to make their legal claims DOES NOT ESTABLISH that stopping drugs is not constitutional.

Your drug war depends on those liberals' view of the Constitution.

For those who believe in the original Constitution, using Wickard to overrule state marijuana regulation is a violation of both the Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment. You can't weasel out of your support for Wickard, nor your trashing of the Tenth Amendment by claiming the 'defense clause'.

boy, do YOU have it backwards... the feds cannot pass laws OTHER THAN their enumerated powers- and drug use is not one of those- each state has a right to make its own policy and laws for drug use.

There is nothing in the constitution that says federal laws trump all state laws- ONLY the enumerated powers.

The civil war was not fought to establish federal supremacy (well actually maybe it was) but it was WRONG. The states had the right to withdraw from the union. Preserving “The Union” was not some sacred thing...

imagine if they had fought over something OTHER THAN slavery, like the fed government telling you you had to buy health insurance, for instance.

Yes, but read my post. Many of these folks are high ON THE JOB.

I know that THC can stick around awhile.

Sure, it gets dissolved into the tissues of the body.

But my point is, just try to explain that when a factory worker cuts his hand off, or injures another worker.

The fact that THC is absorbed into fat will not save your business when you get sued.

I agree that workers should be allowed to indulge, OFF the job.

But some people have taken the lax pot laws to excuse usage while on the clock.

“This is an example of federalism that happens to be correct. The states cannot pass laws which violate federal laws. I believe we fought this thing called “THE CIVIL WAR” to establish that states cannot do such a thing.

Smoking pot is not a “freedom” it’s a dangerous indulgence that harms the users and often many people around them as well. Every pot-head I know is on welfare or some other form of government assistance like SSI. You don’t think there “freedom” is just a bit too costly for the rest of us?”

First off I don’t equate smoking an herb, with human slavery.

Secondly, following your logic we should not have repealed Prohibition, for surely the costs of alcohol vastly exceed the cost associated with the herb.

And finally we should not be paying to support people that do harm to themselves.

I don’t drink or use drugs, but we should not have our rights taken, by the government.

Punish those who do harm, and leave the rest of us alone.

Worrying about pot is nothing

A dependent victim class tsunami is underway and will destroy the country I grew up in.

Political correctness and its stepchild open borders is what killed us

Marijuana is just chatter in the big picture

Something many here are very ignorant of us is that in the south most pot smokers are gun types who believe in God especially ove 30

I know in Oregon and libtard places pot means hippie

But not here

Its like saying all blacks are like Thugs....many are but not all

I personally know plenty folks who get high who are far right..like me

I know drinkers who are moderates and libtards

But I get it...you live in Boulder or Grants Pass or Yreka it likely looks dismal examining weed smokers as prog hippies

Simply not like that where I live

I think defending the nation is within the scope of privileges and immunities.

That is an interpretation "privileges and immunities" worse than the current thinking on the Commerce Clause.It is a very good thing that what you think is of no consequence.

I don't think I shall ever cease hearing how uninformed I am from people who ultimately turn out to be less informed. Put simply, you do not know what you are talking about. Perhaps I can inform you, but I have found that generally when someone takes a set against something, there is no persuading them with things like "proof" or "reasoning." "Reasonable" people are few and far between in my experience.

You seem like a relatively intelligent person, so perhaps you will prove to be the exception. At this point, I don't see any reason to make any arguments of my own because others have already done a pretty good job of compiling the facts and presenting the argument. I urge you to read this document, of which this is an excerpt.

Japan employed illegal drugs as a strategy against China during the former's occupation of Manchuria before World War II. The Japanese and Chinese had been enemies for centuries. Aware of the social destruction that drugs cause, as well as the devastating role that opium had played in China's history, the Japanese distributed opium, heroin and cocaine along the Chinese coast when they took control of Manchuria in 1931, earning Japan $300 million per year.11
The strategy not only helped finance Japan's war machine, but the Japanese planners thought that it would make the subsequent occupation of China much easier because drug consumption would reduce the combat-effectiveness of Chinese troops...

And when you grasp the essential point made in that document, I dare say I can find a half a dozen more that might serve to make you better informed regarding this subject in which you have chosen to wade.

Your drug war depends on those liberals' view of the Constitution.

No it doesn't, and that you assert that it does demonstrates that you really haven't been listening to what I have been attempting to tell you. I'm wondering if I should just stop trying.

You can't weasel out of your support for Wickard, nor your trashing of the Tenth Amendment by claiming the 'defense clause'.

Just because you say something doesn't make it true. There is no "weasel". I am exactly right. Constitutional Authorization for Drug interdiction derives from the Mandate to defend the nation and not "Wickard". That Liberal judges say otherwise, and that it has become the goto precedent, is immaterial to me.

Here. Educate yourself.

boy, do YOU have it backwards... the feds cannot pass laws OTHER THAN their enumerated powers- and drug use is not one of those- each state has a right to make its own policy and laws for drug use.

No they don't. No more than they can authorize the importation of nuclear material or chemical weapons. Drugs are chemical weapons being used against the American populace. I note that "chemical weapons" are not specifically enumerated in the constitution, but they are easily within the blanket coverage represented by the defense clause.

Worrying about pot is nothing

A dependent victim class tsunami is underway and will destroy the country I grew up in.

Political correctness and its stepchild open borders is what killed us

Marijuana is just chatter in the big picture

The most astute comments I have seen directed towards me so far. Yes, you are right, marijuana is just another symptom of what is actually going on in this country right now. I only get into these marijuana threads because after six years of arguing with a libertarian about this topic, I now have a visceral reaction to the topic whenever I see it. I know it's a little cockroach, but by gum I can't help wanting to step on it every time I see it.

But getting back to your larger point, this is a subject that has occupied my mind for quite a long time now. For quite awhile i've been pondering how to turn around this descent into the maelstrom which we all seem to be making, and much of what I have learned informs me that this is very likely not possible.

I abhor being fatalistic, and though the future seems bleak, I still look for hope that things can be changed for the better.

I'm not finding much. For a long time I have come to regard our problems as systemic and more or less inevitable. We are following Rome into the dustbin of history, and what appears to be coming next looks pretty horrible. The Ancient Greeks put forth the concept of Kyklos and Alexander Tytler came up with his "Tytler cycle", and I see numerous other thinkers and philosophers throughout history have noticed the cyclic rise and fall of nations and empires, and it appears that we will be carried down by these same forces of chaos that brought the others low.

This creeping marijuana problem is just another aspect of this larger societal devolution. So is "gay marriage", abortion on demand, political correctness run amok, and a loss of immigration policy. All the degradations we are currently seeing appear to be fed from the same poisonous stream, the source of which appears to be encapsulated in the old saying "Good times make bad people."

You might find this discussion thread useful if you have an interest in this topic. I am known as "Diogenes" on that website.

Do you want prohibition reinstated?

The first thing those who wish to legalize drugs trot out is prohibition. I have generally taken to either ignoring or mocking the comparison, but as I don't recall whether or not you have seen my previous comments on prohibition, I will give a quick synopsis of what I think about it.

I think the 18th amendment was a mistake. It was a foolhardy mistake. I concede that Alcohol is a drug, and that it causes yearly devastation in lost/destroyed lives and property damage. I think the world would probably be better off without it, but I also think that genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago.

Alcohol has been established in human society since known history began. It was simply irrational to believe that you could eliminate something which is so ingrained into a society simply by passing a law.

Other drugs are relatively new, and have not permeated through society in the manner that alcohol has. Alcohol is a special case where it is simply not reasonable or practical to eradicate it, and society has counted the losses it suffers on account of it as acceptable.

That alcohol is an exception does in no way justify the emergence of new "alcohols" to add to it's death toll, especially when the evidence indicates that these addictions are open ended, and appear capable of expanding to an ever increasing number of the population, and in ever increasing severity as to consequences. This thread topic appears to be a prime example of the phenomena in action. We are even now seeing increase in usage, and if we open the legal door for marijuana, we will have no arguments with which we can close it on cocaine and opium.

We have seen what opium has done to China, and it is readily apparent to me that Opium is an existential threat to any nation that cannot stop it from coming into it's borders.

The answer is to close the door when it's little, because when it's large, it will be impossible to close it. (same on immigration.)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.