Legal marijuana is giving Colorado a stinky conundrum. Visitors can
buy the drug, but they can’t use it in public. Or in a rental car. Or in
most hotel rooms.
The result is something marijuana advocates and opponents feared —
people toking up on sidewalks, in city parks and in alleys behind bars
and restaurants — despite laws against doing so. And they’re getting
dinged with public marijuana consumption tickets.
From the capital city of Denver to mountain resorts like Aspen and
Breckenridge, police wrote nearly 800 citations in for the new crime of
public consumption in 2014, the first year recreational sales began.
Some legalization advocates believe they have a solution — pot clubs.
Denver voters may consider a ballot measure this fall to expressly
allow pot clubs.
But marijuana clubs have proven a harder sell here than legalizing the drug in the first place.
The amendment that legalized marijuana doesn’t give people the right
to use it “openly or publicly.” But Colorado’s constitution doesn’t ban
public use either, leading to a confusing patchwork of local policies on
weed clubs.
Denver and Colorado Springs have existing pot clubs, but the clubs operate somewhat underground with occasional police busts.
The small northern Colorado town of Nederland regulates a club that
advertises, “out of state, out of country, and of course locals are
welcome.”
Things are more complicated in the Denver suburb of Englewood, where
city council members were apparently taken by surprise that the city had
licensed a pot club. They then voted 7-0 last month to allow no more
clubs.
No other states with legal recreational pot have licensed clubs.
Alaska’s Marijuana Control Board voted last year to repeal an explicit
ban on social marijuana clubs, but the state hasn’t yet finished work on
the potential to allow for people to use pot at certain stores that
sell marijuana.