Despite all the nice things marijuana legalization has brought his state \u2014 money, tourists, positive press \u2014 Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has always been, at best, a reluctant and unreliable friend to the marijuana industry.<\/p>\n
Hickenlooper opposed 2012\u2019s historic Amendment 64 which legalized adult-use cannabis in Colorado. And as late as 2015, with retail marijuana stores open in Colorado for a year, Hickenlooper\u00a0was blasting legalization as a \u201cbad idea\u201d\u00a0<\/a>and was telling other states to \u201cwait a few years\u201d before they followed Colorado\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n Other states did not listen, and why should they? Colorado\u2019s cannabis industry now records over $1 billion a year in sales.<\/p>\n Yet Hickenlooper \u2014\u00a0who is weighing a presidential bid against Donald Trump in 2020<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 isn\u2019t through with making things difficult for legal cannabis in his state. Last week, over the span of two days, Hickenlooper\u00a0vetoed three marijuana-related bills <\/a>that had passed the Colorado state legislature\u00a0\u2014 so angering the marijuana industry that Colorado cannabis businesses are\u00a0now threatening to leave the state.<\/a><\/p>\n Most notably, the governor unilaterally undid legislation that would have allowed Colorado parents to try cannabis to treat autistic children. He also vetoed legislation that would have allowed Colorado cannabis merchants to offer customers \u201ccannabis tastings,\u201d in a manner akin to the way wineries, breweries, and virtually every other seller-of-things to offer samples. Finally, he struck down a bill that would have helped\u00a0allow publicly traded companies to invest in licensed Colorado cannabis companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n During a news conference on June 5, Hickenlooper insisted that his presidential ambitions played no part in his decisions to overturn the will of the legislature.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He may have a point \u2014 if he were serious about winning support across the country in a challenge to Donald Trump, who on Friday\u00a0signaled his possible support<\/a>\u00a0for marijuana-policy reform on the federal level, Hickenlooper would not have vetoed these modest advances.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Hickenlooper sounded very much like an ambitious Democrat looking to fit a centrist profile, when he trotted out the tired-and-circuitous \u201cwe don\u2019t have enough science\u201d argument to justify vetoing the bill to provide cannabis to autistic children.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we are very sympathetic with families advocating medical marijuana (MMJ) as a safer and more effective treatment for their children, we cannot ignore such overwhelming concerns from the medical community,\u201d Hickenlooper wrote in a letter that accompanied the veto. \u201cIn vetoing this bill, we do so on sole concern that medical efficacy of MMJ to treat ASD has yet to be fully studied by medical professionals and scientific experts entrusted to this role at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.\u201d<\/p>\n As for nixing cannabis tasting rooms and investments from publicly traded companies, Hickenlooper claimed that allowing the industry to expand in these modest ways could trigger federal enforcement. He did not specify how, but\u00a0he did say<\/a>\u00a0that expansion must be \u201cconsistent with our federal oversight, and not degrade the robust regulatory system that Colorado worked so hard to establish.\u201d<\/p>\n In a press release, Hickenlooper did say that he will issue an executive order instructing health officials to start researching whether cannabis is effective in treating autism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But since Hickenlooper waited until the first week of June to issue his vetoes \u2014 a full month after the end of the 2018 legislative session \u2014 the bills must be reintroduced next year, when Colorado will have a new governor.<\/p>\n So what does this mean? \u201cIn the end, Hickenlooper tries to wipe out the marijuana industry,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Todd Mitchem in an article for the Denver-based Westword. That\u2019s hyperbolic \u2014 Hickenlooper did not welcome in the feds, which would have been political suicide \u2014 but not by much.<\/p>\n With nothing left to lose in Colorado aside from his reputation, Hickenlooper sealed a legacy of creating unnecessary difficulties for the cannabis industry at best, and of doing what he could to undo the will of the voters at worst.<\/p>\n Baffled, disappointed and betrayed, Colorado\u2019s cannabis industry can\u2019t do worse with the next governor, who\u00a0appears likely<\/a>\u00a0to be U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who vowed to see all three bills into law should he be elected.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think governors should veto cannabis legislation?<\/p>\n The post Colorado\u2019s Governor Vetoes 3 Cannabis Bills, Sparking Outrage<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Despite all the nice things marijuana legalization has brought his state \u2014 money, tourists, positive press \u2014 Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has always been, at best, a reluctant and unreliable friend to the marijuana industry. Hickenlooper opposed 2012\u2019s historic Amendment 64 which legalized adult-use cannabis in Colorado. And as lateContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1044,50,21,4382,2983,687,4552,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26851,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26850\/revisions\/26851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Colorado\u2019s Governor Vetoes 3 Cannabis Bills, Sparking Outrage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"