May 16, 2011 08:39 PM UTC

Legal Weed For Colorado in 2012?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the AP reports via the Durango Herald:

Marijuana advocates racked up big wins in this year’s session of the Colorado Legislature. Now they’re turning their sights to a bigger effort – full legalization on the 2012 ballot.

Pot legalization backers hope to start gathering signatures as soon as this summer to put the question to voters. Given Colorado’s low signature threshold for ballot initiatives, which currently stands at about 86,000 people, they say they expect an easy path to the polls.

Colorado voters defeated a legalization measure in 2006, as did California voters last year. But activists here are regrouping for another push.

“We’re going to have a great legalization debate in 2012,” predicted Laura Kriho of the Cannabis Therapy Institute, a powerful grass-roots organizer that alerts marijuana advocates to lobby public officials about measures related to pot.

The pro-marijuana community is feeling better about its prospects for full legalization at the polls in 2012, in part due to the better success they enjoyed this year defending Colorado’s liberal medical marijuana laws in the legislature–not to mention similar demographic shifts we’ve talked about with regard to other formerly taboo subjects. We’ve heard from many sources that the pro-marijuana lobbying effort has become more professional recently, which bodes well: we’ve said many times that the less reasonable, politically amateurish types advocating for pot are the worst enemies of their own success. A poll follows–has Colorado’s attitude toward pot changed enough since 2006, when legalization failed, to pass a legalization ballot measure in 2012?

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