Colorado’s Marijuana Legalization Law Is An Example Of ‘American Democracy,’ Senator Says, But He Wishes State Would’ve Capped THC

It’s no secret that Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) was opposed to Colorado’s historic marijuana legalization ballot initiative over a decade ago when he was the state’s governor. But while he’s since become a vocal supporter of the reform, he said in a new interview that there are “some things I wish we’d done differently,” including setting THC limits on cannabis products.

Speaking with Evoke Media’s Sabrina Merage Naim on the “A Fine Mess” podcast, Hickenlooper and the state’s first top cannabis regulator Andrew Freedman reflected on Colorado’s experience with marijuana legalization. Both conceded that they were initial skeptics of the reform—but they’ve since come to appreciate Colorado’s leadership on the issue.

“To be honest, in the beginning, I didn’t like Colorado being a test tube, where this was going to be one of the great social experiments of the 21st century, and we didn’t have the data,” the senator said.

Concerns about the potential expanded access to high-THC products for youth informed Hickenlooper’s opposition at the time, but once voters approved legalization, he said he knew he needed “to do the best I can to follow their will.”

But while the now-senator has repeatedly acknowledged in the years since that his worst fears about legalization did not come to fruition—citing data showing that youth cannabis rates have not increased in the state in a sign of the efficacy of regulating the marketplace, for example—he did say he would’ve taken a slightly different approach to certain rules.

“There’s some things I wish we’d done differently. I do, in retrospect, wish we’d put caps on the amount of THC you could get in a gummy bear or something,” he said. “I think we’ll eventually get there. There are a few things we did wrong.”

But he credited Freedman, Colorado’s former chief cannabis regulator who later became the executive director of the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), for doing a “remarkable job” and creating “what has turned out to be a national model for how to regulate legalizing marijuana, copied by many states, both from East Coast to West Coast.”

“That’s what I love about American democracy,” Hickenlooper said. “You have an election, the results, you have to accept the results and then move forward. That’s how you create progress.”

“I was determined to do everything I could to implement what had passed,” he said. “I was going to try and make it work as much as I possibly could, because I didn’t want the conspiracy theories that, you know, ‘Hickenlooper really tried to torpedo it because he was against it,’ and I wanted to make sure everyone was at the table.”

Like the senator, Freedman wasn’t initially on board with marijuana legalization either before he became the state’s top cannabis regulator. In fact, he conceded for the first time during this latest podcast interview that he voted against Amendment 64 in 2012.

“I honestly went through the thought where I was like, ‘Well, I want this to happen. I think it’s a good policy nationally, but I don’t want Colorado to be the first people to try to figure this out. I’d rather see another state figure it out because it just seems like it’s going to be complicated,’” he said. “The irony of that was that it just came back to actually be my problem” to oversee the nation’s first state cannabis market.

Freedman also weighed in on the state’s psychedelics legalization law—another historic first—during the interview.

Asked whether he said other drugs might follow the “precedent” Colorado set with marijuana, he said “clearly the conversation has to include psilocybin.”

“Psilocybin has been so interesting. Mushrooms have been so interesting because there does seem to be a much deeper devotion to staying in the medical lane,” he said. “There’s clearly a therapeutic benefit from this, and we want to see that recognized by the [Food and Drug Administration], and we want to go the purely pharmaceutical route there, whatever that might look like.”

“But there’s obviously some lessons learned from cannabis, and I think even in states that have gone through legalization of cannabis, they’re now kind of in the same vein, passing voter measures to legalize psilocybin in the same way,” Freedman, who has since stepped down as head of the alcohol- and tobacco-backed CPEAR, said.

In an interview with Marijuana Moment last week, Hickenlooper separately touted the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, calling it “timely and appropriate” that states like Colorado are taking the lead on reforming laws around the substances after making history with marijuana legalization.

Colorado’s current top cannabis regulator also recently discussed the history of the state’s first-in-the-nation adult-use marijuana market, noting that she expects the lessons learned over the years will inform how her office approaches setting up Colorado’s new legal psychedelics program.

As with cannabis, psychedelics regulation is “going to be an iterative process,” said Dominique Mendiola, who holds split roles as the senior director of both Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) and the state’s Natural Medicine Division. Both are under the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Unlike with cannabis, psilocybin businesses won’t sell psychedelics directly to consumers to take home with them under Colorado’s psychedelics law. And because people use cannabis and psychedelics for different purposes, officials are expecting the psilocybin program will be considerably smaller than the state’s sizable marijuana market.

A series of listening sessions launched last year has been helpful “to understand what is on the minds of the community,” Mendiola explained. “We have needed to be very deliberate about that when we engage in that work.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), for his part, has been supportive of the state’s new psychedelics law since voters approved it, saying in his State of the State speech in January that Colorado is “leading the nation on natural medicine.”

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