FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Colorado Exemplifies Devastation Caused by Marijuana Legalization
Oct. 12, 2018 (EIRNS)—U.S. Attorney for Colorado Bob Troyer has exposed what six years of commercialized marijuana legalization has brought to that state: a gigantic increase in marijuana use, particularly by youth, soaring black market and drug cartel activities, and virtually no net revenue gain for the state.
The horror described by Troyer is exactly the result intended by the British Empire’s Opium War against the U.S., implemented by Barack Obama and George Soros.
In his Sept. 28 Denver Post op-ed, “It’s High Time We Took a Breath from Marijuana Commercialization,” Troyer reports:
“Now Colorado’s youth use marijuana at a rate 85% higher than the national average. Now marijuana-related traffic fatalities are up by 151%. Now 70% of 400 licensed pot shops surveyed recommend that pregnant women use marijuana to treat morning sickness. Now an indoor marijuana grow consumes 17 times more power per square foot than an average residence. Now each of the approximately 1 million adult marijuana plants grown by licensed growers in Colorado consumes over 2.2 liters of water—per day. Now Colorado has issued over 40 little-publicized recalls of retail marijuana laced with pesticides and mold.
“And now Colorado’s black market has actually exploded after commercialization: we have become a source-state, a theater of operation for sophisticated international drug trafficking and money-laundering organizations from Cuba, China, Mexico, and elsewhere.”
Production is not more-controlled, as the legalizers promised.
“Last year alone the regulated industry produced 6.4 metric tons of unaccounted-for marijuana, and over 80,000 black market plants were found on Colorado’s federal lands.”
Nor has alcohol and opioid use decreased as promised.
“Colorado’s alcohol consumption has steadily climbed since marijuana commercialization. How about the industry’s claim that marijuana will cure opioid addiction? No, a Lancet study found that heavy marijuana users end up with more pain and are more likely to abuse opioids.”
Like the tobacco, alcohol and opioid “addiction industries,” the marijuana industry “makes the vast majority of their profits from heavy users, and so they strive to create and maintain this user market. Especially when users are young and their brains are most vulnerable to addiction,” he wrote.
And has Colorado state’s revenues risen? “No, because there’s been no net gain: marijuana tax revenue adds less than 1% to Colorado’s coffers, which is more than washed out by the public health, public safety, and regulatory costs of commercialization.”
