As a candidate for district attorney, I must have a position on the regulation or legalization of marijuana in order to respond to many voters' legitimate concerns over this issue.
A district attorney is responsible for the enforcement of all laws. However, there is wide latitude in how vigorously they are enforced, as well as wide perimeters for recommending appropriate sentences for people who stand convicted.
The current medical-marijuana system has flaws and benefits for patients experiencing real benefit to its use. The harder question is in prescribing a course, improving upon the current system of regulations —should we throw our hands in the air and surrender any form of marijuana regulation, should we return to a system where no marijuana possession is legal or should we adopt a compromise between these extremes?
I believe that unless legalization occurs, law enforcement and prosecutors should consider unlawful marijuana possession and regulated distribution a low priority, and persons breaking the laws should be subjected to a drug evaluation, paid for by the person who enters the criminal-justice system, to determine whether or not they are marijuana addicts.
Those identified as such should be monitored for usage and given an opportunity to be treated, rather than aggressively prosecuted and punished. Those who were evaluated not addicted or at risk would be required to pay the monetary cost associated with their criminal-justice contact and have their cases dismissed.
Marijuana users coming into the criminal-justice system for illegal possession, who are evaluated to be addicted and then fail to complete an appropriate rehabilitation regimen, would suffer convictions that, under current Colorado law, would remain on their records for at least 10 years.
Local police, courts and prosecutors continue to be challenged by marijuana's regulation and the possibility that marijuana use and distribution could become legal.
The state of Colorado in 2000, through a voter-approved initiative, began to license the use and sale of medical marijuana with a special class distinguished from otherwise illegal drug users to grow, sell, possess and get high on marijuana, still leaving people without a medical-marijuana card at risk of arrest and prosecution.
Muddying the legal waters, however, permitted users who light up are not exclusively protected by state statutes but must contend with the federal government's laws that classify marijuana use, possession and distribution as illegal.
As distinguished from Colorado law, federal regulations identify marijuana as a substance without any medicinal benefit, setting up a tug-o-war with a state's ability to permit a usage that the U.S. government criminalizes.
Though confusing, this dichotomy is consistent with the general rule that each governmental layer can regulate the same person's actions differently, reaching opposing conclusions upon what is legal. These inconsistencies are not confined to drug laws but appear elsewhere in our legal fabric.
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