Get Over It, Hickenlooper, Beauprez: Pot is the New Normal

Neither of the leading
candidates in Colorado’s gubernatorial race supports legal pot in
their state. The Democratic incumbent, John Hickenlooper, said the
2012 vote that allowed recreational pot was “reckless” (it passed
with 55 percent of the vote). His Republican challenger, former
congressman Bob Beauprez, says “we are at that point” where it
should be recriminalized.

They’re part of the growing anti-pot backlash that is seeking to
stamp out not recreational pot in Colorado and Washington but
medical marijuana in the many states that allow it.

And yet by virtually any measure, legal pot in Colorado has been
a success: Crime, especially murder, is down in the Denver area,
where most legal pot is sold. Automobile fatalites are down
statewide. Tax revenues, while lower than originally estimated, are
growing every month and will kick in up to $70 millin new dollars
to various jurisdictions. There isn’t data yet for this year, but
the rate of pot use among teenagers in Colorado was lower in 2013
than in 2001, when the state introduced medical marijuana.

Hickenlooper and Beauprez may be fishing for votes that don’t
exist—one recent poll shows that just 42 percent of Coloradoans
iike legalization while another recent poll shows 55 percent still
favor it—or they may just be stuck in  an old
mind-set.

Either way, I argue in a
new Time column, legal pot is only going to become
more widespread. That’s despite alarmists such as Patrick Kennedy
of the anti-pot group Project SAM and the endless stream of
invective against legal weed. We’ve grown up as a country and are
now ready to add pot to our list of legal intoxicants. That’s a
victory (a big one) for freedom and the 750,000 people a year who
get arrested for pot.

This much seems certain: In a world where adults can openly buy
real pot, you’re also less likely to read stories headlined
“More
People Hospitalized by Bad Batch of Synthetic Marijuana.” And
support for legalization isn’t fading. The market research firm
Civic Science finds that 58% of
Americans support laws that “would legalize, tax, and regulate
marijuana like alcohol.”

That figure obviously doesn’t include either candidate for
governor of Colorado. But just like the rest of the country,
whoever wins that race will have to learn to live with pot being
legal, crime being down, traffic fatalities declining and fewer
teens lighting up.

Read the whole Time col.

I debated Kennedy about legalization in CNN earlier this year.
Watch below: