According to a poll by SmithJohnson Research, 51 percent of 600 likely voters in Colorado said they would vote against marijuana legalization if it came up today.
The survey results show a change in mood in less than three years. Amendment 64 was on the ballot in 2012 and almost 55 percent of Colorado voters supported legalizing recreational marijuana. However, based on current observations, 45 percent said they would strongly oppose the measure. Only 36% said they would be strongly for the measure if it were on a ballot now.
“Voters seem to be having some buyer’s remorse,” said Val Smith, polling and research director from Sacramento-based SmithJohnson Research. “They don’t like the impact Amendment 64 has had on their state across some very important dimensions, like edibles, teen drug use and impaired driving.” This news follows recent trends around the country which show that marijuana is losing in the states and in the courts.
The top-cited concerns of voters were edible marijuana products and driving under the influence of marijuana.
Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Florida and President of SAM, said: “After two years of increased marijuana usei, a growing proliferation of marijuana candies aimed at children, more arrests in schools for potii, a jump in the number of people publicly using marijuanaiii, and an increase in marijuana-related driving citationsiv, we shouldn’t be surprised that Coloradans are coming around to opposing legalization.”
“It’s time for a renewed conversation about marijuana in Colorado,” said Ben Cort, Colorado SAM Member and an addiction treatment professional. Bob Doyle, chair of Colorado SAM said, “We intend to kick-start those conversations so that Coloradans – rather than the marijuana industry – can determine the future of their own state.” SAM stands for Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a nationwide effort to cut down on marijuana usage.
Community Alliances for Drug Free Youth sponsored the poll. The nonprofit organization based in San Diego promotes state, federal and international drug policies that keep drugs out of the hands of youth. The poll, which was conducted over the phone with 600 self-identified 2012 voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and other concerned citizens who want to move beyond simplistic discussions of “incarceration versus legalization” when discussing marijuana use and instead focus on practical changes in marijuana policy that neither demonizes users nor legalizes the drug. SAM supports a treatment, health-first marijuana policy.
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iNational Survey on Drug Use and Health, Colorado State Estimates (2014).
iiDenver Police Department Versadex and OSI database (2014).
iiiDenver Police Department, 2014
ivDenver Police Department, Data from Aurora and Denver through Dec 1, 2014.
Who’d have ever thunk! Of course, it’s not surprising that reasonable Coloradans are having second thoughts.
Let’s see- Holmes used marijuana, so did Klebold and Harris who committed the massacre at Columbine High School. And so did Earl Moore, who planned on bombing the Southwest Plaza near Columbine HS, and oddly on 4/20 the same anniversary day as the Columbine massacre, and the day pot lovers celebrate marijuana. All very odd.
Is anybody out there getting it? Thousands of murderers using mind-altering marijuana- shootings, bombings, stabbings, decapitations, cannibalism, etc.- and nobody of a national presence suspects that their brains could have been adversely altered from marijuana? The killing madness is not primarily driven by a “gun culture”, no instead, it’s a “drug culture”. We’re being sold a bill of goods.
Colorado had its two worst, most heinous mass murders in the State’s history, Columbine High School and the Aurora theater shooting, all committed by current or former pot abusers, yet Colorado in some odd state of unfathomable stupidity, decides to legalize marijuana anyway!
Why did this happen to Colorado and several other states, and perhaps soon to be our entire nation? Because there are millions of pot favorable brains out there. Many are addicted, and many more have rewired their brains from marijuana abuse.
Their brains tell them to do whatever it takes- lie, cheat, deceive, etc.- so as to make marijuana legal and available so they themselves can get high and indulge with impunity. They do not care about the marijuana abuse and killing madness correlation; they do not care about the Holocaust their illegal drug abuse has created in Mexico (100 thousand dead including tortures such as eye gouging, live burnings, decapitations and the murders of school children); they do not care about deforestation, greenhouse gases from indoor growing, or the killing off of the last Native American tribes in the Amazon; they do not care about the 100 billion gallons of water per year for marijuana operation used in drought-stricken California. All they want is to get high from marijuana.
Love and near reverential worship of marijuana dictates their decisions and drives their brains. And they are intentionally growing their numbers in order to convert America into a marijuana nation. Perhaps some day we will see the marijuana plant replace the bald eagle as our national emblem.
However to be fair regarding the ‘Holocaust in Mexico’, though a product of OUR illegal drug culture, the probable primary driver of smuggling drugs from south of the border (i.e. Mexico, Colombia, etc.) is most likely because of US addiction of the harder drugs, heroin, cocaine, and related by-products.
But isn’t it odd that compassionate Americans can be so concerned about wrongs that occurred on our soil in years past over a hundred years ago, like slavery, racism or treatment of Native Americans, for instance, wrongs that have mostly been already recognized and addressed, but we completely ignore the ongoing crimes against humanity being committed now, in REAL TIME, as a product of our illegally operating drug culture?
We worry about CIA ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ and discuss in depth how EITs are a form of torture, but we completely ignore the tortures perpetrated on Mexicans caught in the middle of the illegal drug trade- BECAUSE of the demand of millions of Americans who use drugs illegally.
Or we worry about racism and harms against minorities, the Hispanics, and so forth, yet nobody comes forth to protest these horrific crimes against Mexicans, as well as Native Americans.
Or how about the African Americans in the big cities caught in the middle of a very violent culture, places such as Chicago, our current President’s home town, now the new murder capital of the US. And this President was also a part of that drug culture at one time, who has said himself, marijuana is no more harmful than alcohol. Really? Look at Mexico, Sir, look at Chicago. Yeah, the harder drugs run the show, but marijuana is the ‘base’ drug, the introductory drug, the common drug used by all druggies.
And, it’s very probable that the atrocities being committed by those in the drug trade, the gangs, the cartels, etc., are from cannabinoid deranged minds. That is, they too are heavily engaged with marijuana, and their brains are subjected to the loss of inhibitions and sympathy for life so as to release violent, murderous tendencies.
We have not just a problem. No, the problem confronting us is a genuine monster, a leviathan that either must be destroyed, or it will destroy us!
Interested parties may be interested in knowing a huge ten year research project called the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study has just embarked.
The goal is to study pre-adolescent minds of thousands of young individuals before they begin using marijuana (and/or other drugs), while they use it in their teenage years, and see what the outcomes are when the participants reach adulthood. The study is likely to be the most effective scientific endeavor to date to understand what effects marijuana may have on the developing brain.
From this study, I assume (and hope) we may be able to once and for all determine if this freaky correlation between cannabinoid use and subsequent heinous, barbaric crime all about the world, does indeed have a causal basis or not.
It could be the murderous sociopaths, because of their natural, mental framework, are simply just attracted to the cannabinoids as part of their being . Or it could be that cannabinoid abuse is inducing mental problems, or exacerbating underlying mental conditions, that eventually result in the commission of heinous crimes.
This is exciting because the findings have the potential to be truly revolutionary!
However, ten years is a LONG time to wait! In the mean time, our country will likely to see major changes because of the increasing acceptance and liberalization of marijuana. Yet better late than never.
BTW, the National Institute of Health is launching this collaborative ABCD study.