Colorado Governor to Voters: Legalizing Marijuana Was ‘Reckless’

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat currently in the
midst of a close reelection campaign, doesn’t think voters in his
state were being responsible when they voted to legalize
marijuana.

In a debate with his Republican opponent Bob Beauprez yesterday,
Hickenlooper said that voters in his state were “reckless” when
they voted to allow recreational pot use,
according to the International Business Times, and
that he still doesn’t believe that the legalization measure should
have passed.

“I think for us to do that without having all the data, there is
not enough data, and to a certain extent you could say it was
reckless. I’m not saying it was reckless because I’ll get quoted
everywhere, but if it was up to me I wouldn’t have done it, right.
I opposed it from the very beginning. In matter of fact, all right,
what the hell—I’ll say it was reckless.”

He also argued that governors in other states should be wary
before proceeding down the path to legalization. 

“Any governor that looks at doing this before we see what the
consequences are, I would view it as reckless,” he said. 

The IBT summarizes some of the “consequences” the state
has seen:

Since the new law took effect in 2014, the state is on track to
raise more than $40 million in new annual revenues for
education and other priorities from marijuana-related taxes. There
has been little evidence that crime rates or driving fatalities
have increased since the law took effect. In fact,
the opposite appears to be true: Violent
crime rates in Denver were lower in the first half of 2014, and
traffic fatalities in the state are near a record low.

That doesn’t even account for the
tens of millions of dollars in estimated annual savings for law
enforcement spending, nor the reduction in human costs that comes
with abandoning criminal penalties for marijuana use. 

Based on the outcomes so far, one might be better off arguing
that it would be reckless to oppose legalization. 

As Jacob Sullum
noted earlier this summer, even Hickenlooper seems to have
recognized that he was overly worried about how legalization would
work out, admitting that his concerns about radically expanded
usage and driving while high have not turned out to be true.

Recognizing that he misjudged the effects of legalization does
not appear to have meaningfully changed his judgment about whether
legalization should have occurred, however. Instead, he appears to
have decided that it’s better to tell the state’s voters—the same
voters he presumably hopes will cast their ballots for him next
month—how misguided they were.