News » Question 300 in Fort Collins, Colorado A Bad Idea

November 3, 2011 by Aaron Turpen

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Photo: VoteNoOn300.org

The rhetoric and money flowed on both sides of the Question 300 debate in Fort Collins, Colorado. After results were tallied today, however, the ban on dispensaries in the most “progressive” Colorado town outside of Boulder has passed. Dispensaries in Fort Collins’ city limits must cease operations within 90 days.

Until this point, the town has been the go-to destination for many medical marijuana patients whose towns and cities in the area have already banned outright or bureaucratically made it impossible for dispensaries to open. This new ban will close down 20 licensed businesses and put all of their employees on the unemployment line.

As Steve Ackerman, owner of Organic Alternatives and President of the Fort Collins Medical Cannabis Association says “I and 20 other businesses will close our doors… forty pieces of commercial real estate will probably default. Two-hundred plus people will have no jobs and all medical marijuana needs will be taken care of by a gray-to-black market.”

Further, the city will now lose out on future income, since over $440,000 in taxes that paid in the last 18 months by those businesses.

Meanwhile, backers of the ban touted “family values” and “keeping the potheads out of town” as their mottos. What they fail to note is something simple: according to Colorado law, any caregiver or patient can grow marijuana in residential areas. What this ban has done is drive more marijuana into homes and gardens in the very neighborhoods these Question 300 backers live in.

Further, this is another 20 businesses in Colorado that won’t be paying into the fund for the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, which means less funding for regulators to track cards, caregivers, and grow ops.

Finally, there’s the patients. This means that patients in Fort Collins and surrounds will have to travel all the way to Boulder or Denver for medicine. Nearby Loveland, Windsor and Greeley have already banned dispensaries. Many patients who cannot grow for themselves are also not readily capable of traveling to purchase medication.

Not that the soccer moms who spearheaded the Question 300 campaign care about the sick and disabled.

[via The Coloradoan]

Tags: Colorado, fort collins, medical marijuana, MMJ