Your county officials are trying really hard to not ‘just say no’ to amendment 64… Really

It’s not as easy as everyone wants. I’m talking the politics of when the proverbial rubber hits the road…or in this case maybe when the actual weed hits the vaporizer. On Tuesday, I attended the Gunnison County Commissioner discussion where the board deliberated passing a second reading of a “just say no” ordinance opting out of state efforts to essentially legalize the marijuana business in Colorado.
It was good to see county commissioners Jonathan Houck, Paula Swenson and Phil Chamberland say they’ve all heard enough public comments that they are moving positions from the first time they passed that ordinance, which would ban the sale, manufacturing and commercial growing of marijuana in the county. They are now more open to responsible local regulation. “Just say yes” but with good controls.
All three voiced that they wanted to follow the will of the voters and move toward allowing some semblance of legalized marijuana in the county. After all, about two-thirds of the county did vote to approve the state constitutional amendment that basically is legalizing recreational marijuana for those older than 21.
But as we all know, this is unchartered territory. There are not a lot of places in this U.S. of A. where weed is legal. The state legislature recently passed regulations dealing with the issue. The towns of Mt. Crested Butte and Gunnison are banning the weed. The town of Crested Butte is also trying to figure out appropriate regulations. The feds are playing coy.
On Tuesday, the commissioners were initially inclined to pass the ordinance on its second reading with the understanding that passing a ‘just say no’ ordinance would allow them to reconsider the issue at a later date—the ball would stay in their court, so to speak, and buy them enough time to develop local regulations. They hoped to do so by spring. By not passing a ban, state regulations would automatically apply, and it wasn’t clear whether or not they could ever create localized regulations after that. As I said, it’s not as easy as anyone wants.
The bottom line now is that after hearing from so many constituents the commissioners want to have local control over regulations governing any legalized marijuana in the unincorporated county. That is a good goal. They need more time to figure out those regulations. Fair enough. There isn’t a whole lot of experience with regulating legal marijuana anywhere. So they didn’t pass the ‘just say no’ ordinance…yet. If they have to do that to keep control, they will but they all swore they’d only do it in an effort to give them the opportunity to come up with their rules.
Based on a state deadline, they have to make a decision on what to do by October 1. There’s no super rush. They continued the consideration of the second reading of the ordinance until late September. So they hope to gather a lot more information about the issue and what it would mean to our local county by then. And then they hope to proceed toward some sort of marijuana legalization in the county with county regulations.
They did the right thing Tuesday and appear to be moving in the right direction.
To the three of them, thank you for listening and acting upon the stated will of the people you represent.