A Fort Collins, Colo., medical marijuana grower walks through her warehouse in 2010. (Chris Hondros/Getty Imag …
DENVER—A ballot initiative in Colorado that could make the state the first to effectively legalize marijuana has an unlikely bunch of people very nervous: owners of the state's medical marijuana dispensaries.
Despite an expected surge in demand, some fear passage of the initiative, called Amendment 64—which legalizes the buying and selling of up to one ounce of pot at a time for customers over the age of 21—could goad the federal government into a crackdown on the dispensaries, ending their industry's three-year miniboom.
If the amendment passes, the "best-case scenario [is] you get a million new customers," the owner of one medical marijuana store in downtown Denver told Yahoo News. "It would be wonderful." But he asked not to be named, spooked by the prospect of bringing attention to his store in case of increased federal action.
Both President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who face off in their first debate on Wednesday night at the University of Denver—giving the state initiative the potential to reverberate nationwide—have signaled their opposition to states that flout the federal drug law with legalization measures. Because the practice is still illegal under federal law, the medical marijuana industry can survive only if the federal government turns a blind eye.
And if the amendment passes, Colorado—one of 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have legalized medical marijuana—would have the most liberal pot policy in the country, one that could bring in tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for state and local governments. (Washington and Oregon have similar amendments on their November ballots, but Colorado's seems to have the most steam, with polls showing more Coloradans are for the amendment than against it.)
No comments:
Post a Comment