Every state that has legalized recreational marijuana up to now has done so by voting. This means that the majority of the state’s people clearly wanted to legalize the drug. However, most of the time, elected officials did not want to legalize marijuana. In fact, even after the state has legalized the drug, they still oppose it. This is the issue with most elected officials when it comes to marijuana. Let’s take a look at Colorado.
John Hickenlooper is a Democrat and was elected to be governor of Colorado in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Most of his fame came as the founder of the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, which strongly opposed legalization in 2012. Unfortunate for him, the amendment passed with fifty-five percent of voters.
Even today, when asked whether or not cannabis legalization has been beneficial or detrimental to Colorado, the governor will never give a straight answer. The new amendment has resulted in tens of thousands of new jobs for Colorado and is generating more than $120 million in taxes for the state annually. Furthermore, cannabis-related arrests in Colorado have gone down by eighty percent. However, the governor still cannot decide whether it is good or bad. His answer changes depending on his audience.
When he was running for re-elections in 2014, the governor stated that legalizing cannabis in Colorado was “reckless,” albeit he had no issue receiving donations from the cannabis industry when nobody was looking.
Even in 2015, he reported to CNBC that “If I could’ve waved a wand the day after the election (in 2012), I would’ve reversed the election and said, ‘This was a bad idea.’ You don’t want to be the first person to do something like this.” He also informs other governors to wait a few years before legalizing marijuana.
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