You are very intelligent and I do agree with you more than you probably think. As far as harm reduction, I don't think we can get the good ole boys in Georgia and Alabama to give up their beer for dope and I still say we are in a downward spiral that we can't pull out of. It seems to me our society is failing.

I don't like the legislated mandate that I have to wear my seat belt but it would be stupid for me not to wear it. It still doesn't mean I like the law that makes not wearing a seat belt a ticketable offense.

More laws, more people, less freedoms. The majority isn't always right and it's getting scary. I sound just like my daddy long ago ! He actually said all change is bad. I laughed out loud and still do. I do have to say all change is not always good. He predicted I would agree with him before it was all over.

I grew up in the 1960s in SoCal and lost a few friends in Vietnam but far more to drugs, mostly mariuana through doing stupid things while stoned.

I think Colorado has just made a big mistake.

A legal Marijuana dispensary moved in to the commercial/industrial complex near my business about 4 years ago. It was a disaster. Damage to cars, businesses, violent crime, theft, vandalism, etc. went through the roof. Several times their customers would walk up to the bushes in front of an office, unzip their pants and pee in the bushes in full view of the people inside the office. Three customers defecated in the parking lot, one in full view of a number of businesses and 20 feet from a busy 4 lane highway. Their customers started sleeping in cars in the parking lot waiting for them to open. There were armed guards in the parking lot.

If you executed all the employees and all the clients of that Marijuana dispensary, you would have been about 99.99% right. About once a month someone would comment that they saw a human being enter the "pot place". They would say "Wow, that person looks like they could be a legitimate customer". It was that rare. Some of their customers would come in to my business when the dispensary was closed and brag about how they were scamming the system. I trap the rats I find in my citrus grove in have-a-heart traps and take them up to the hills to live but the customers of the pot dispensaries do not deserve that courtesy.

Good luck Colorado, I think your done..........

A better plan would have been to increase the penalties for drug use, drug sales, etc. until it solved the problem. If that escalated to public torture of drug dealers, that would be better than legalizing marijuana. It seems to be a pattern lately that when some system is broken that we find a way to make it worse. It was only a few years ago and I'm still furious - can you tell?

If you want to see the future, this film is very accurate vision:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

I don't think I translated my thoughts to my post very well since I still feel extremely violated by the "legal" dispensary several years later. It was a nightmare for all the legitimate businesses that were nearby.

Several businesses had problems keeping employees as they were afraid to come to work. I was forced to change my business hours as we could no longer have just one person in the office during the first and last hour that we were open. Even though they were only open for a year before the DEA finally closed them down, we lost several businesses that were replaced by businesses that aren't as pleasant. The owner of the business complex put it up for sale just to be rid of them.

I know there isn't an easy solution for the drug problem, but a legal dispensary creates other problems. From the experience of being near one for a short period, the owners are criminals and the customers are the dregs of society. I realize we need a better solution than we have, but I don't see their solution as positive.

Looking from outside, it is very astonishing. We have always been told that people from Colorado are extreme right wing rednecks and we learn that the majority voted for the legalization of marijuana!
We should better wait that kind of thing from California.

Never trust preconceived ideas!

Poor Colorado. Over the last 5 - 8 years, Colorado has been inundated by people from California moving to Colorado, causing our state to change from a red state to a purple state. Most Coloradans wish the liberals would stay on the left coast, and leave us alone... - Millet

Millet,
I think most long term Californians feel the same way. My fathers side of the family settled here in 1889, when this was a citrus growing area. I hardly even know anyone that is liberal. During the last election, there was one house near me with a non-conservative campaign sign.

California seemed to attract the liberal wackos from everywhere else and became liberal. Now Colorado is getting the same thing. My relatives in Montana and Utah feel the same way. When I used to spend half the year in the Rockies, I learned to keep Utah plates on my car. I would fly to my house in Utah and travel from there.

I'd like to see the left coast liberals moved left of the left coast, preferably far enough that they can't swim back.

When I was going to grad school at CSM 20 years ago people were bemoaning the influx of Californians into Colorado. Here in Maine and in bordering New Hampshire we complain about the influx from Massachusetts. Maine was already net left, but NH is now starting to turn fairly purple as well...shocking to watch.