COUNCIL NOT LOOKING PAST SMOKE AND MIRRORS ON POT ISSUE

That funny smell coming from city hall is the odor of lawmakers
passing around the hypocrisy pipe about the fate of medical marijuana
dispensaries in Aurora.

City lawmakers voted overwhelmingly July 12 to ask voters to decide
the issue, creating a referendum that will query voters whether to ban
the dispensaries in the city. The vote came after state law changed
earlier this month, giving Colorado city's and towns the power to
allow and regulate such dispensaries, or for local lawmakers to ban
them, or to refer a question about bans to voters.

Aurora City Council members agreed that the issue is an important one,
and that voters should have a say. Given that logic, Aurora voters had
better get ready for marathon ballots in the future since city
lawmakers regularly decide a bevy of critical issues each week.

The move by city council is pretty much a cop out.

Granted, there's no doubt this is a controversial issue. While it's
clear that Colorado and Aurora voters in 2000 agreed that marijuana
has medicinal value for clearly ill individuals, it's unclear if the
voters envisioned a booming industry with a plethora of dispensaries
and tens of thousands of "patients" flooding state rolls with
inexplicable, sudden back pain.

Abruptly, the practicality of getting what we wished for is much more
complex than just about everyone envisioned.

But for now, the state has sanctioned the notion of marijuana
dispensaries. The question now is, should Aurora join in, and how?

The problem with city council's response is that the question raises
many more questions. Where should dispensaries operate? Should the
city regulate them? Who should he permitted to go inside? How many
should there be?

The answer to many of those questions will have a direct bearing on
whether voters might or might not want them cropping up in the city.
If the city says they can't be within a mile of each other, that means
there could be no more than about 142 dispensaries.

Instead, voters are expected to buy or deny this political pig in a
poke in November, and they find out what they got or gave away after
that.

With something so important that it has to be referred to voters, no
one should have to be surprised by what they agreed to after the election.

City lawmakers should have sorted through the issue themselves,
proposing a set of rules and regulations that these pot shops would
have to live under, and then determining whether the public would or
wouldn't support such a program. At the very least, city lawmakers
need to give some sense of their inclinations on the matter. Aurora is
likely in the cross hairs of organizations looking to challenge the
constitutionality of a ban in court, considering Colorado's
third-largest city could be the biggest platform to test those laws.

But the need to be cautious can't overshadow the need of voters for
the details they need to make an informed decision.

In retrospect, the state did little to help itself this year in
clearing up proper dosing methods, prescription methods and possession
limits so patients don't become suppliers themselves. That was the
work that state lawmakers were tasked to do, and instead of holding
them up to that idea, we're left with a ticking bomb waiting to
explode in the courts.

City lawmakers need to rise above their political and legal instincts
and press for exploring all city options and a likely direction before
voters decide the issue this fall.