Other states to CO: Keep your funky dope fiends in your state

Colorado took the bold step to let people smoke pot, defying federal law. So the state found an additional source of revenue, and pot heads found their Utopia.

The problem is that many of Colorado’s neighboring state potheads go get their drugs in Colorado, then head back home.

This is why Nebraska and Oklahoma filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to prevent Colorado from enforcing the measure known as Amendment 64, which was approved by voters in 2012 and allows recreational marijuana for adults over 21.

It seems that Nebraska and Oklahoma prefer that Colorado take a “Hotel California” approach and allow dope-smoking slackers to “check in anytime you like, but you can never leave!” {guitar rift}

 

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the lawsuit was without merit.

“Because neighboring states have expressed concern about Colorado-grown marijuana coming into their states, we are not entirely surprised by this action…However, it appears the plaintiffs’ primary grievance stems from non-enforcement of federal laws regarding marijuana, as opposed to choices made by the voters of Colorado.”

The lawsuit says Colorado marijuana flows into neighboring states undermining their efforts to enforce their anti-marijuana laws.

“This contraband has been heavily trafficked into our state,” Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said at a news conference in Lincoln. “While Colorado reaps millions from the sale of pot, Nebraska taxpayers have to bear the cost.”

The lawsuit says the drug trafficking has strained Nebraska and Oklahoma’s finances and legal systems. Police are spending more time and money making arrests, housing inmates, impounding vehicles, seizing drugs and handling other problems related to Colorado pot.

Yet, Colorado has raised more than $60 million in taxes, licenses and fees from medical and recreational marijuana, just since January.

It’s just a matter of time before pot is legal all over the country, similar to how gambling spread. As the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (how’s that for an ironic name) wrote in a recent report, the amount of Colorado pot seized on highways increased from an annual average of 2,763 pounds between 2005 and 2008 to a yearly average of 3,690 pounds from 2009 to 2013. The weed was headed for at least 40 different states.

Don’t expect America’s dope-smoking president or Attorney General to do anything. In fact, this is one instance where the supposedly racists “states rights” are being condoned by the normally over-reaching fed.

In a policy statement last year, the U.S. Justice Department noted it doesn’t have the resources to police all violations of federal marijuana law. It laid out eight federal law enforcement priorities that states need to protect if they want to authorize “marijuana-related conduct.” They include keeping marijuana in-state, which Colorado has obviously failed to do.

The Fix.

If I were Oklahoma or Nebraska, I would seize all assets of people arrested on marijuana charges, and sell their property at auction.

I would then set up border stores where people from CO could come get FREE marijuana which was confiscated from people leaving CO.

I bet once Colorado’s tax base eroded, they would work more vigorously to keep their funky dope-smokers in Utopia, CO.

 

 

 

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