When Colorado and Washington won permission from the U.S. Justice Department to begin selling marijuana in retail stores, the states promised to keep the pot inside their borders and away from children.
They’re facing big challenges trying to do that.
Even before Colorado opened its recreational pot shops last year, when only the sale of medical marijuana was legal, the state had a reputation as a top pot exporter.
In 2013, 40 states intercepted marijuana that came from Colorado, with Missouri ranked first in the number of cases, followed by Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Kansas, according to the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. While no final count has been released for 2014, there’s been no stop in the seizures.
In Washington, D.C., Michael Botticelli, who was confirmed Monday as the nation’s new drug czar, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that an increase in cross-border trafficking of marijuana is now a “serious concern,” and that he wants to fight it.
And in Seattle, the Washington Poison Center said last month that marijuana-related exposures jumped 56 percent last year, going from 158 in 2013 to a record high of 246 in 2014. Teens were involved in the most incidents, followed by children under 12. They got sick from a wide range of products, including pot-induced chocolate bars, brownies and gummy bears. Many of those came from the state’s unregulated medical dispensaries, since the recreational shops, which opened last summer, cannot sell items that appeal to kids.
With Colorado reporting a similar spike in pot-related poison calls last year, critics say it’s clear that both states are doing a poor job controlling marijuana.
“The elephant in the room that hardly anyone wants to acknowledge is that Washington and Colorado . . . are not implementing legalization particularly well,” said Kevin Sabet, president of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “Marijuana is pouring over to border states, despite campaign promises to the contrary. Calls to poison centers are up, and the big marijuana corporate lobby is as strong as ever.”
The issue has some influential members of Congress raising alarms, including Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who says too much Colorado pot has ended up in his state.
Last month, Grassley and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, complaining that the Justice Department has made no effort to determine whether Colorado and Washington are following federal guidelines set for them in 2013.
And John Walters, the drug czar under President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration is pursuing “a strategy for failure” by allowing states to sell marijuana.
“The legalization of marijuana has become a flood,” he said in an email.
Before Washington state opened its first pot stores last July, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee vowed “an all-hands-on-deck effort” to keep marijuana out of the hands of minors. One of his top aides said this week the governor’s office is continuing to push for new safety measures and to collect the best data on marijuana use and abuse.
“This issue is definitely on our radar,” said David Postman, Inslee’s director of communications.
Postman said the state’s Liquor Control Board has done a good job so far, making sure marijuana packaging is child-resistant and that it doesn’t contain images that appeal to children, such as toys or cartoon characters.
Colorado is taking the brunt of the criticism, partly because it has a longer history of sales. Colorado got a six-month jump on Washington state, opening its first retail stores on Jan. 1, 2014.
In December, the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Colorado’s law, arguing that the flow of marijuana is hurting neighboring states. Their lawsuit contends that no state should be allowed to legalize marijuana, since it’s banned under federal law.
Kansas authorities have also found themselves dealing with the spillover effects of Colorado’s law.
In January 2014, Kansas highway troopers arrested a man with four pounds of marijuana. He admitted buying it in Colorado for $2,800 a pound and said he planned to sell it to an acquaintance in Hays, Kan.
A month later, Kansas troopers stopped a woman for a routine traffic violation on Interstate 70 and discovered she had nearly $150,000 in cash. She said she planned to buy pot in Denver and sell it in Illinois.
And in March 2014, Kansas troopers arrested a driver from Manhattan, Kan., who was carrying $10,000 in cash and nearly an ounce of pot. The driver said he was headed to a marijuana store in Colorado.
All of the incidents, and many more, are detailed in a report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. Botticelli cited the report during his confirmation proceedings.
Grassley said that Colorado accounted for 10 percent of the marijuana confiscated in his home state in 2010. But he said that number more than tripled, to 36 percent, in 2012.
In a written statement to senators, Botticelli said it’s too early to assess the results of first-year marijuana sales in either Colorado or Washington. But he said the drug czar’s office and other federal agencies are busy “monitoring the consequences.”
Legalization backers say it’s misguided to fault the states and that it’s far better to have marijuana regulated by the government, not the black market.
“Marijuana has been widely available in every state in the nation for a very long time,” said Mason Tvert, a spokesman in Denver for the pro-legalization group Marijuana Policy Project, which helped lead Colorado’s legalization campaign in 2012. “There is more control over marijuana cultivation and sales in Colorado and Washington than any other state in the country.”