Yes. Colorado was the guinea pig. Now other states can look at what happened there and say; “No Thanks”.
Although I am for limited measures of decriminalization - it should be obvious to even a stoner - Open legalization is a disaster.
Open legalization is a disaster.
I knew it!
Well it is soon to be legal in Cali and I am hoping the weather takes them out to my very liberal relatives...
You might want to look at the recent election results... more states are saying "yes", every cycle.
“Open legalization is a disaster.”
We don’t know that, because we’ve never seen “open legalization.”
What Colorado has is strict regulation. As I predicted in the 1960s, government interference has nurtured the black market by keeping the price of government-regulated pot artificially high. That keeps organized crime in the picture.
One thing that reveals the fundamental dishonesty of the OP is their comment that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes who tested positive for marijuana has doubled. That is the same kind of “lying with statistics” that MADD and other groups used to demonize drinking.
Among the questions to ask about that statistic are:
1. How many of those drivers were in some way responsible for their accidents? If somebody has half a beer and then gets rear-ended waiting at a stop light, they call that an “alcohol-related” accident.
2. Pot is detectable for a month after use. How many of those drivers were impaired at the time of the accident, and how many had not smoked for days or weeks before the accident?
3. Of drivers who were impaired, assuming that is a non-zero number, how many were at fault for the accident? How many got T-boned by drunks running stop signs?
In short, that little factoid tells us less than nothing about the effects of “legalization” on traffic safety. Less than nothing because it is deceptive, and pretends to convey information that it does not convey.
It used to be that bums moved on out of Colorado when it got cold. You had to have something together to spend a winter here. If the cops scooped a bum up in the winter, they’d run him at least out of town, if not completely out of the state.
Now, SJW do-gooders stick broomsticks in the spokes of Darwin’s bicycle. They provide support that allows bums to survive the winter here. This, IMO, is a bad thing, no matter how virtuous the SJWs feel.
Where I live, pot is no longer “cool” among teenagers. The “hipster hero” element is gone. There has been no increase in the number of bums. There has been a rise in crime, which is directly attributable to the Invasion of the Border Crashers. If this town got rid of the “Hispanics,” we could get by with one cop.
It ain’t pot. It’s the noxious fruit of leftard policies that has caused these things.