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| Denver Is First City To Legalize Pot |
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Posted by CN Staff on November 03, 2005 at 08:08:11 PT By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer Source: Los Angeles Times 
Denver -- Bring on the jokes about the Mile High City.Denver on Tuesday became the first city in the nation to wipe out all criminal and civil penalties for adults caught possessing a small amount of marijuana. About 54% of voters supported a ballot measure legalizing possession of less than an ounce of pot by individuals 21 and over. The ordinance is more radical than pro-marijuana measures approved over the years in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and half a dozen college towns across the country. Most of those initiatives decriminalized marijuana for medical use, or replaced criminal penalties with small fines or directed police to make enforcement of marijuana laws a low priority. Denver, by contrast, erased adult possession as an offense entirely. State laws banning pot still apply in Denver, however. Police for years have cited most offenders under state law rather than city ordinance, as a matter of convenience. The state law is pre-printed on the front of tickets, so just by checking a box an officer can issue a fine for as much as $200. To use the previous city ordinance — which carried the threat of as much as a year in jail if convicted — an officer would have to write out the relevant code by hand. "Citing under state law has been a tradition here for years…. We intend to keep doing what we've been doing," said David W. Broadwell, an assistant city attorney. Although the Denver vote may have no practical effect, advocates of relaxed drug laws said it was symbolic. In large part, that's because of the tactics activists used to promote the measure. The marijuana liberalization group SAFER ran a provocative — critics said deceitful — campaign to cast the measure as vital to public safety. On yard signs and billboards, online and in voter forums, campaign director Mason Tvert, 23, tried to persuade voters that marijuana was a safer alternative to alcohol. He argued that street crime and domestic violence would drop if residents were legally allowed to smoke pot rather than down a six-pack of beer. College campuses too would be safer, he said, if joints replaced kegs at parties. Snipped: Complete Article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/milehigh.htm Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Related Articles & Web Site: Safer Choice All Eyes on Denver’s Marijuana Laws High Hopes for Marijuana Debate To Voters, Issue was Freedom of Choice Pot Issue Gives New Meaning To Mile High City Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #8 posted by FoM on November 03, 2005 at 13:40:34 PT |
| Yes I am excited. Ohio's laws changed thru the state somehow. I am not a person who likes to brag but the stats because of what is going on in Colorado broke all records for CNews. I record front page hits every 24 hours and they generally are in the 3,000 hit range. Today it was almost 8,000 front page hits in 24 hours. That means many people are excited. The stats for CNews also broke a record. They were 256,717 total hits for 24 hours. Cannabis is important to many people including me. http://cannabisnews.com/stats/ [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #7 posted by Taylor121 on November 03, 2005 at 13:32:33 PT |
| "I do not believe Denver is the first city to legalize pot." The only other place in America where possession of marijuana is legal is in Alaska, but that was through the courts. This is the first time a city has VOTED on changing the law to eliminate ALL penalties. Other cities have decreased penalties or made it the lowest law enforcement priority, but never before has such a radical law passed, and hopefully this will be what starts the chain reaction. :) I can sense FoM is excited! [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #6 posted by FoM on November 03, 2005 at 13:22:30 PT |
| I'm not sure. It's like a parking ticket for almost a quarter pound in Ohio. You won't get a record and the fine would be at the most $100. Ann Arbor is good but I don't know how they do it. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by i420 on November 03, 2005 at 13:09:13 PT |
| I do not believe Denver is the first city to legalize pot. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by siege on November 03, 2005 at 11:50:45 PT |
| That's 1,440 a day, or the equivalent of three fully loaded 747's crashing and killing everybody aboard every day! That's 10,000 a week - 500,000 a year - every year - ten times the number who died in Vietnam. For them we have a wall, but where is the memorial to the cancer deaths? Have you lost a loved one to cancer? Who hasn't? We have a War on Cancer, but the more money we spend on cancer, the more people die of it. we don't have have effective Non-toxic cancer cures. Read about cancer cures which were and still are being relentlessly suppressed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Medical Association (AMA). The only harm they would do would be to drug company profits. Why does one American die every 3-5 minutes (100,000-150,000 a year) from the effects of FDA-approved, pharmaceutical drugs, used as directed? This is 3-5 times the number who die each year from illegal street drugs! For those, we have a drug czar, but it appears we have only indifference for the 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 Americans who died over the past decade from the effects of legal drugs -- a veritable drug-company-FDA-generated Holocaust? Where is the memorial, where is the march on Washington in protest over these? The more FDA employees, the more people die from the drugs FDA approves. solution Not more money for bureaucrats, but freedom from bureaucrats. The U.S. has one of the most (probably the most) heavily and tightly regulated medical systems in the world, dictated from the top down by the FDA and the AMA. In computers, we move with lightning speed, but our economy would look like the Soviet Union if it were regulated like healthcare. We'd still be using punch cards if IBM had had an FDA to protect it (as the drug companies do)! [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by observer on November 03, 2005 at 10:33:42 PT |
| Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does -- Margaret Mead
[ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by FoM on November 03, 2005 at 09:48:40 PT |
| Toker00 I agree. The circle is coming around again if that makes sense. In the 80s and 90s something went really wrong. Now it's time to turn it around once more. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by Toker00 on November 03, 2005 at 09:44:58 PT |
| This is an amazing group of young people. Motivated, intelligent, informed. Looks like C-news and other cannabis friendly sites have given birth to young cannabis activists who will succeed where we have beaten paths to the door. Now that people know this battle can be won, it will be won. These are the people who will carry on the struggle for human rights issues, too. Once it's (activism) in your blood, it's hard to stop at just one victory, or one issue. These are the "children" we've been waiting for. The ones who survived the governmental onslaught of DARE and other propaganda groups. The second generation of FREE THINKERS. Wage peace on war. END CANNABIS PROHIBITION NOW! [ Post Comment ] |
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