PLAN WOULD FORCE JOB LOSS, FINANCIAL RUIN

A Phony Attempt To Save The Children

The Springs Planning Commission may decide Thursday to recommend
destruction of roughly 70 businesses. The demise of medical marijuana
stores would result in the failure of their grow centers, which are
licensed by the city and state to contract with the stores.

If the commission recommends destroying the new businesses, it recommends
forcing more than 700 full-time employees out of their jobs. The commission
would recommend the vacation of about 130 commercial leases. It would
recommend financial hardship for property owners who depend on commercial
leases.

The commission would recommend a staggering loss in sales tax revenue, as
customers would turn to merchants outside of the city limits or in nearby
cities and towns.

The commission isn't telling the public of a proposal to render hundreds of
people jobless. Instead, it's presenting the idea as a way to protect
preschoolers, seminarians, college and k-12 students from coming within
1,000 feet of medical marijuana stores on their way to and from school.

It's a sinister, back-door maneuver to create a de facto medical marijuana
moratorium in a city that has no problem with medical marijuana stores.
They are legitimate businesses that generate enough sales tax revenue to
solve one or more of the nagging budget-related dilemmas facing City Hall.

Tanya Garduno, who owns the Amendment 20 store at 1600 N. Academy, isn't
sure whether the proposed regulations would close her store. That's because
preschools operate all over the city, and she can't rule out being near
one. If preschoolers or other children were to happen upon Garduno's store,
they would see a door with an green cross on it. The green cross, the
emerging symbol of medical marijuana, looks like a green version of the Red
Cross logo. Garduno's business looks like most of the others. It's
absolutely unremarkable. Only licensed patients are allowed in, and soon
the state will monitor all such stores with real-time video surveillance.

So here's the scenario the commission would protect us from by recommending
the byzantine buffer zone:

"Mommy, what is that?" the child asks of the door with a green cross.

"That's where some people who are sick get medicine," mommy could say, in
the unlikely event the question arises.

The zone wouldn't protect college students and seminarians, as most could
get a referral to shop at the stores.

The proposed buffer exceeds anything applied to liquor stores - which
really are harmful to kids - or head shops, bars, tattoo parlors, smut
shops or pharmacies that sell hard narcotics capable of killing a child.

The purposeless buffer would subject us to tens of millions in lawsuits the
city would lose. Not long ago, after all, city and state government happily
licensed these businesses right where they are, with a minimum of $10,000
in combined city and state fees.

Policy proposals do not come worse than this one, in which central planners
would vote for unemployment and financial devastation - all in the name of
saving children from something that poses them no harm.