Rocky Mountain High Producing Some Undesirable Side Effects

Rocky Mountain High Producing Some Undesirable Side Effects
...Amendment 64 was approved of by 55 percent of Colorado voters in 2012. Promoted as a revenue-generating “regulate marijuana like alcohol” measure, its passage and ensuing repercussions caught many by surprise.
Regulating marijuana like alcohol, it appears, is a breathtaking oversimplification of what is required to turn an illegal intoxicant into a viable commodity.
The citizen-led ballot initiative behind Amendment 64 went beyond simple decriminalization and created a new civil right by encoding the possession and use of pot into the Colorado State Constitution...
...In March of this year plants at several growing facilities in the Denver area had to be quarantined because of the misuse of “pesticides.”
The pesticides, it turns out, were improvised concoctions of chemicals, including some unidentifiable mixtures. 
Cannabis growers have been left to improvise since no commercial pesticides are labeled for legal use on cannabis plants.
...Law enforcement issues, such as marijuana-intoxicated driving and the illegal movement of vast amounts of cannabis product into other states, are the tip of the iceberg.
Social and law enforcement issues resulting from the Colorado interstate pot pipeline prompted Nebraska and Oklahoma to file lawsuits against the state, citing the fact that marijuana commerce violates federal law and increases the burdens of law enforcement in other states.
Other symptoms of Colorado’s pot culture include increased use among teens, resulting in educational problems in middle schools and high schools, a spike in “edibles”-related emergency room visits, consumption by children and pets resulting in illness and death and regulatory confusion surrounding public consumption and enforcement.
...In 2014 and 2015, nearly $6 million in pot revenues have been distributed to local governments. But the cost of increased law enforcement, drugged driving incidents, fatal crashes, loss of productivity and a huge spike in gang-related crime bring into question the cost-benefit of those dollars. 
Teen drug-related school expulsions are also on the rise.
And the notion that prisons filled with minor drug offenders would be relieved of overcrowding—a selling point of legalizing marijuana—has been blown to smithereens. 
Denver’s homeless population has exploded since Amendment 64 went into effect. 
And there are indications that finite tourist dollars are going more to pot and less to Colorado’s iconic natural wonders...