BACKING POT LEGALIZATION

Both Candidates For HD 2 Support Legalizing Marijuana

Although many issues separate the Democrat and Republican candidates
running for State House District 2, the contenders agree on one
thing; marijuana should be legal for adults.

Having Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, and Doc Miller, his Republican
opponent in the upcoming election, both publicly support the
decriminalization of marijuana has some activists giddy about the
changes in public opinion towards the drug.

"I think it's a good sign that marijuana reform is becoming a widely
accepted position," said Mason Tvert of Safer Alternative For
Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), a group that points out the ways they
perceive marijuana to be less harmful than alcohol. "We see
Democrats and Republicans not only both voicing public support for
reforming marijuana laws, but in some sense often vying to see who
can support them more."

Ferrandino, a member of the Joint Budget Committee, said legalizing
marijuana would help the state's pocketbook, which is facing an
additional $75 million shortfall next budget year and a potential $1
billion shortfall the following year. 9News reported this week that
the city of Denver collected more than $1 million in sales tax
revenue from medical marijuana from December-April.

"If you legalize it and you tax it, you're going to increase the
amount of revenue to the state," Ferrandino said. Miller, a lawyer
challenging Ferrandino for his House District 2 seat, added that
legalizing marijuana would result in fewer people in jail, less money
spent by the state, and allow him as an attorney to "stop fishing
them out one at a time."

"My solution to the drug war is to do like we did with prohibition
when we realized that didn't work; legalize marijuana," he said.

A regulated environment

Although he supports the legalization of marijuana, Ferrandino said
the industry would have to be regulated in order to avoid a "wild,
wild West" type of environment. He believes the biggest hurdle to
legalization is making sure that police officers could definitively
tell whether someone was driving under the influence of marijuana.

Denver Police officers are trained to recognize when someone is
driving and under the influence of drugs. Officers can also call over
a "Drug Recognition Expert" police officer to conduct tests and
further identify the signs of someone driving under the influence of
drugs.

However, police officers don't have a device like a Breathalyzer that
can determine on scene whether someone is definitively on drugs. DPD
Spokesman Sonny Jackson said that the police department isn't made up
of scientists or inventors who could invent such a device, so they
must rely on their training.

Jeremy Rosenthal, an attorney who specializes in DUI cases, said it's
very tough for cops and the state to prove in court that a person was
driving under the influence of drugs because there is no
near-foolproof test like a Breathalyzer.

"They usually only win those cases when the cop actually sees the
person smoking," he said.

Rosenthal added that he has seen more clients who are charged with
driving under the influence of drugs since the proliferation of
medical marijuana dispensaries. Because the Denver Police Department
doesn't have a separate ticket for driving under the influence of
marijuana, it's impossible to say how many people have been arrested
or cited for it, Jackson said.

Public support

Ferrandino believes the path to marijuana legalization must go
through the voters. Tvert, who originally considered putting an
initiative on this year's ballot asking voters to legalize marijuana,
will likely wait until 2012 to bring the measure forward because of
funding issues.

However, recent polling shows that nearly half of Coloradans support
the legalization of marijuana, and as U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.,
said earlier this year, having multiple lawmakers publicly talk about
legalizing marijuana would have been unheard of only 10 years ago.

"The time for debate and discussion has definitely come," said
Ferrandino.