February 17, 2010 04:48 AM UTC

Hickenlooper Draws Fire Over Pot Appointee

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• by: ColoRabble

A controversial letter written by an appointee of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has just been unearthed, and it’s already bringing heat on the would-be governor.

How about this for an opening line (keeping in mind this letter is entirely about marijuana):

Dear Citizens of Colorado,

Those who want to legalize drugs weaken our collective struggle against this scourge of our society. Like a cancer, proponents for legalization eat away at society’s resolve and moral fiber. The marijuana-drug legalization movement has nothing to offer users and addicts but more drugs.”

Unfortunately for Hick, who officially vouched for this anti-pot extremist, an internal poll recently commissioned by local and national marijuana policy reform organizations found that half of likely voters in Colorado – and two-thirds of likely voters in Denver – support making marijuana legal and treating it like alcohol.



In other words, this probably won’t sit well with the large and growing population of marijuana reform supporters, not to mention the exceptionally vocal community of organizations and individuals working to legalize marijuana. In fact, they are already taking action and calling on Hickenlooper to replace his appointee, which has already resulted in a flood of e-mails into the mayor’s office.

The anti-marijuana manifesto was distributed by Denver Police Lt. Ernie Martinez, and just over one year later, Hickenlooper appointed him to the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel – an official city body charged with implementing a voter-approved ordinance designating adult marijuana possession Denver’s lowest law enforcement priority to the “greatest extent possible”.

Yet Martinez was the most vocal public opponent against that initiative, and has since made it abundantly clear he has no intention of fulfilling that mission. So, essentially, Mayor Hickenlooper appointed a anti-marijuana crusader to fill a role on a panel working to reduce marijuana arrests and prosecutions in the city. That’s like appointing Tom Tancredo to the Latino Commission.

Needless to say, Lt. Martinez’s views on marijuana are entirely out of line with most Denver voters and a whole lot of Colorado voters. And, come on, “a cancer eating away at society’s resolve and moral fiber”? Really?

Is this someone Hickenlooper wants to associate himself with? He can’t possibly think it will help him with his base, and it certainly isn’t going to motivate many college students and progressives to make sure they vote for him. And if a marijuana-related initiative ends up being on the ballot statewide – or in localities around Colorado – there will surely be a surge in pro-marijuana voters hitting the polls (and out-of-state college students rushing to re-register in Colorado…).

As you can see, Lt. Martinez distributed the letter in his capacity as president of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association, which is an interest group composed of drug task force members and other law enforcement officials hellbent on keeping marijuana illegal – and thus keeping their jobs. Do these drug task force and DEA guys really have nothing better to do with their time?

It was written in late August 2006, just days after Amendment 44 – a statewide initiative to remove penalties for adult marijuana possession – qualified for the ballot, and it includes a laundry list of disingenuous, misleading and outright false “Facts vs. Fiction.” For example:

Fiction:  This nation’s drug policy has failed.  It is time to try something new like legalizing small amounts of marijuana.

FACT:  Marijuana use has been the cause of deaths from accidents, disease and recently possible toxicity.

For the record, polls have shown that more than 75 percent of voters nationwide think the war on drugs is a failure, including 86 percent of Democrats, 81 percent of independents, and 61 percent of Republicans. And as for the claim that marijuana has resulted in deadly diseases and deaths related to its toxicity, Lt. Martinez would be hard pressed to find significant, objective and methodologically sound evidence to substantiate his claim.

After all, every objective study on marijuana has concluded that it’s far less toxic, far less addictive, and far less harmful than alcohol for the user and society.

(Disclosure: I will go ahead and out myself so as to not be labeled a sock puppet. My name is Mason Tvert, I’m the executive director of SAFER, and a coauthor of Marijuana Is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink?)