{"id":115926,"date":"2014-12-11T20:57:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T03:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legal-cannabis-celebrates-two-years-in-colorado\/"},"modified":"2014-12-11T20:57:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T03:57:45","slug":"legal-cannabis-celebrates-two-years-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/legal-cannabis-celebrates-two-years-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal cannabis celebrates two years in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scores
Scores of people celebrated the passage of Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado in November 2012. About a month later, Gov. John Hickenlooper formalized it as part of the state constitution.<\/span>Associated Press file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Voters approved Amendment 64 in November 2012. On Dec. 10, 2012, Gov. John Hickenlooper formalized it as part of the state constitution.<\/p>\n

It was a procedural but important step. The governor\u2019s executive order was the first public declaration that Colorado wouldn\u2019t try to block marijuana legalization or ask the federal government, which considers pot illegal, to intervene.<\/p>\n

Hickenlooper also announced a task force to start regulating pot, a signal that Colorado planned to actively manage legalization instead of waiting for a possible federal lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of concern that state officials would not implement the will of the voters or that the state would ask the federal government to intervene,\u201d said Brian Vicente, an attorney and legalization advocate who wrote Amendment 64.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the first indication that was not going to happen, that they wouldn\u2019t stand in the way of legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four days earlier, Washington state implemented its legalization measure with little incident. Washington\u2019s measure was effective as soon as the vote was certified, on Dec. 6 of that year.<\/p>\n

It would be another eight months, until August 2013, before the U.S. Department of Justice would send Colorado and Washington public notice that the federal government wouldn\u2019t intervene as long as the states tightly regulated the drug and took steps to keep it from children, criminal cartels and federal property. That notice, called the \u201cCole Memo\u201d after the deputy attorney general who wrote it, was the final word that states would be allowed to experiment with flouting federal drug policy.<\/p>\n

Legalization advocates said it was clear as soon as voters approved legal weed in both states that federal authorities would step aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless they were going to deploy DEA agents around the state to start arresting adults for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, they weren\u2019t going to be able to stop it,\u201d said Mason Tvert, who ran Colorado\u2019s legalization campaign and now is national spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project.<\/p>\n

Colorado now allows adults 21 and older to have up to an ounce of marijuana, without needing a doctor\u2019s recommendation for the drug. Colorado allows adults to grow up to six plants at home, and it requires the state to allow commercial sales. Those sales began Jan. 1 of this year, the exact deadline laid out in the amendment.<\/p>\n

Taxes on recreational pot weren\u2019t approved by voters until 2013. That\u2019s because Colorado law wouldn\u2019t permit both legalization of and taxes on marijuana to be on the same ballot. Voters approved 15 percent excise taxes and 10 percent sales taxes on the newly legal drug.<\/p>\n

Through October, the most recent month available, Colorado had raised more than $60 million in taxes, licenses and fees from recreational and medical marijuana.<\/p>\n

Last month, Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., voted to join Colorado and Washington in allowing recreational pot for adults.<\/p>\n

\n

Mancos, Dolores move forward with pot<\/h4>\n

Dolores is ready to discuss the possibility of allowing retail marijuana stores in town.
\n The town had banned retail pot sales, citing high costs of regulating and inspecting on-site grow operations.
\n But changes to Colorado pot laws don\u2019t require the product to be cultivated at the store anymore, said town attorney Mike Green.
\n \u201cThat is no longer a concern, so the board may want to revisit the issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s easier now, and could mean more sales tax revenue.\u201d
\n The issue will be discussed at the town workshop on Feb. 23.
\n Mapping out where the shops could go needs to be determined. They can\u2019t be within 1,000 feet of a school, public park, a full-time day care center, or another marijuana store.
\n Mancos Town Board considers retail store
\n The Mancos Town Board will consider a retail marijuana store Wednesday, Dec. 10, after a public hearing on the store, which will be named The Shop.
\n The store is being proposed at 449 Railroad Ave. No. 1, next to Gary\u2019s Auto Repair.
\n Town Manager Andrea Phillips said the store meets all the town requirements and the owners, Paul Coffey and Nathan Fete, have passed all their background checks.
\n According to town ordinance, the shop must be no less than 1,000 feet from a school. The site is 1,124 feet from the Mancos School District.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

of people celebrated the passage of Amendment 64, which legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado in November 2012. About a month later, Gov. John Hickenlooper formalized it as part of the state constitution.Associated Press file photo Voters approved Amendment 64 in November 2012. On Dec. 10, 2012, Gov. John Hickenlooper formalized it as part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115926"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}