<\/p>\n
DENVER \u2013 Moments after Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday called Colorado voters \u201creckless\u201d for legalizing marijuana without all the data, his director of marijuana coordination called the cannabis industry to make sure lines of communication were open.<\/p>\n
Andrew Freedman called Mark Eddy, a consultant for the Marijuana Industry Group, which represents Colorado cannabis businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reach out whenever I hear something that could hit sideways with important stakeholders,\u201d Freedman said.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the governor \u2013 a Democrat in a tight re-election bid against Republican Bob Beauprez \u2013 raised a few eyebrows at a debate Monday hosted by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and moderated by POLITICO.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us to do that without having all the data, \u2026 to a certain extent you could say it was reckless,\u201d Hickenlooper said of legalization during the 45-minute debate. \u201cI\u2019m not saying it was reckless because I get quoted everywhere. But if it was up to me, I wouldn\u2019t have done it. I opposed it from the very beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell,\u201d Hickenlooper continued after briefly pausing. \u201cI\u2019ll say it was reckless.\u201d<\/p>\n
The story quickly went national, with interests as far away as the United Kingdom reporting it.<\/p>\n
For political observers, the comment could be viewed as a foot-in-mouth moment for a governor not looking to alienate any voting blocs. In Colorado, 55 percent of the electorate legalized marijuana in 2012, or about 1.3 million voters.<\/p>\n
Beauprez\u2019s camp quickly pointed out that Hickenlooper attended a fundraiser in August by big names in the cannabis industry. Beauprez opposed legalization.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo raise money from the industry then throw them under the bus is classic Hickpocrisy,\u201d said Allen Fuller, a Beauprez spokesman.<\/p>\n
Eddy said the purpose of the call from Freedman was simply to keep a dialogue going.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of having open lines of communication between the state and the industry, Andrew called to say this statement was made, and I wanted to give you a heads up,\u201d Eddy said.<\/p>\n
Freedman added that it was important to call because of the sensitive nature of the comments in relation to the budding marijuana industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was important to give them the context of everything that was said there,\u201d Freedman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coordinator smooths over \u2018reckless\u2019 voters comment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,481,135],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-117274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-gov-john-hickenlooper","tag-marijuana"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117274","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=117274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117274"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=117274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}