The picture that each side paints is likely to influence the broader legalization debate. Colorado's pot message to U.S.

With Alaska and Oregon gearing up to vote on legalizing marijuana in a few months and many other states considering it further down the road, one state is on everyone’s mind — Colorado.

Activists on both sides of the pot debate are pointing to the Colorado experiment — what they see as its great successes or its horror stories — to make their case around the country.


Their claims about crime, job creation, quality of life, and tax revenues are so divergent that it’s surprising to realize they are talking about the same state.

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But the picture that each side paints — however incomplete or distorted — is likely to influence the broader legalization debate, making the Rocky Mountain State ground zero for the coming pot wars.

“I understand why advocates on both sides are seizing on every scrap of data to make their case; that’s what advocates do,” said Sam Kamin, a member of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s now-closed task force to implement the law and who backs legalization. “We’re in uncharted territory and … people are clinging to any hard data they can find,” he added, warning against a temptation to “cherry-pick statistics.”

While Washington state just opened its first marijuana shops in July, Colorado’s pot industry has been up and running for months.

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A measure on the Alaska ballot and one that will likely appear on the Oregon ballot for the November midterm elections would make those the third and fourth states to legalize the sale and use of marijuana.

But there’s a big problem with the rest of the country looking to Colorado for answers, experts say: There has not been a comprehensive independent study on marijuana implementation in the state. The experts warn that is too early for states to be drawing hard and fast conclusions from the Colorado experience, which only began its implementation in January.

Activists on both sides in Alaska and Oregon and elsewhere, however, aren’t heeding those calls to slow down.

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“Colorado is demonstrating to the rest of the country that regulating marijuana works,” said Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization campaigning to legalize pot across the country.

Pro-pot advocates point to Colorado as a sterling example of the various benefits legalized marijuana can bring to other states — increased tax revenue, economic growth through job creation, more tourism, along with regulations that encourage safe use and wipe out the black market.

Pushing one of their central marketing points, legalization supporters argue that the last six-and-a-half months of the Colorado experiment prove past predictions of doom from anti-legalization advocates have not come to fruition. In particular, they say, crime rates and marijuana use in Colorado have not increased, and believe that with the nightmare scenarios now falling by the way side, states will be convinced to follow in the same path.

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“There was a lot of ‘sky is falling’ rhetoric about legalization in Colorado, and the sky hasn’t fallen,” said Forrest Dunbar, a Democratic congressional candidate in Alaska and a supporter of the state’s legalization measure.

Opponents, though, say a closer look at what’s happening in Colorado should deter Alaska, Oregon and the rest of the country with pressing ahead. They contend that in just half a year, the state already has seen public safety problems, rising usage rates, and pot being marketed to kids.

“The creation of a new Big Tobacco-type industry has emerged in Colorado, along with multiple deaths, increased emergency room admissions, increased poison control center calls, and increased admissions to treatment,” said Kevin Sabet, who co-founded the anti-legalization Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) with former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.). “By any measure, it [has] not been a successful rollout in Colorado.”

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Some elected officials around the country have also warned their states against adopting the Colorado approach. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said his state will not legalize marijuana on his watch and cited the Rocky Mountain State as the reason why. “See if you want to live in a major city in Colorado where there’s head shops popping up on every corner and people flying into your airport just to come and get high,” Christie said in an April radio interview.

In some ways, 2014 is an appetizer for a much larger slate of ballot initiatives expected to come in 2016. Tvert and others acknowledge that some states delayed putting initiatives to a vote for another two years to take advantage of the presidential cycle, which traditionally brings out a larger, younger and more liberal bloc of voters that have more favorable views toward legalization.

But the measures in Alaska and Oregon remain a major early test for the legalization movement, and a loss or two in November could begin to shatter the narrative that cannabis legalization is poised to sweep the nation like same-sex marriage. Polls show support for pot legalization has been increasing rapidly in recent years, with Gallup reporting last October that 58 percent of Americans support legalization, including two-thirds of adults under 30.

“If it doesn’t pass in Oregon, it would be significant,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a supporter of the state’s ballot initiative and the national legalization movement. “There will be some head-scratching. And it would be a setback, make no mistake.”

The state made medical marijuana legal in 1998 and was the first to decriminalize pot in 1973. In November, the Oregon Legalized Marijuana Initiative is expected to appear on the ballot once certification is official. The Democratic stronghold voted against a 2012 legalization measure, a surprising setback for supporters given the victories the same day in Colorado and Washington, although they are optimistic this time around.

And they’ve been using Colorado to make their case.

Pointing to Colorado’s so-called pot tourism, Oregon state Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Floyd Prozanski said he anticipates the same will happen in his state and in the entire region.

The Pacific Northwest is “in a position to lead the nation in formulating cannabis industry policies,” Prozanski said in an interview, stating that passage of the ballot measure would “absolutely” boost tourism.

Anthony Johnson, chief petitioner for the legalization campaign New Approach Oregon, also has been touting the Colorado model.

“The job creation, revenue generation, and the lack of an increase in crime — actually the statistics show a decrease in crime — those factors are certainly influential here,” he said.

But Daina Vitolins, district attorney of Oregon’s Crook County, said in an interview that many of her district attorneys across the state will fight the law because they believe it will lead to an increase in crime.

“Colorado is a disaster, and I don’t want the same thing to happen in Oregon,” Vitolins said, adding that she and the other district attorneys across the state are aiming to educate citizens about marijuana and implementation in Colorado.

In Alaska, where medical marijuana has been legal since 1998, polls show a slim majority of Alaskans support November’s Measure 2 to legalize pot. A May Public Policy Polling survey showed Alaskans back the measure by a narrow 48 percent-45 percent.

But the opposition says that Alaska voters need only to look at Colorado to see how legalization would hurt the state.

In an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News last month, Deborah Williams, a spokeswoman for Alaska’s primary anti-Measure 2 campaign, wrote that Colorado’s experiment is “a harmful, costly and wrong approach for Alaska.”

Williams, the former executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, has focused her campaign on what she calls “kid-friendly, pervasive and in-your-face” advertising in Colorado, particularly for edible marijuana that could be appealing to children. Her organization’s anti-legalization promotional materials display photographs of Colorado marijuana shops that feature rainbow-colored marijuana lollipops and gummy candies and marijuana-infused sugary drinks.

Williams also said the issue of tax revenue from cannabis in Colorado is unsettled and that she believes implementation costs in Alaska would outweigh any increased revenues.

Alaska’s anti-legalization advocates in particular are targeting some of the more shocking headlines from Colorado — including reports that two people died in situations involving edible marijuana. The reported deaths prompted the Colorado legislature to formally suggest greater restrictions on edibles.

On the other side, Alaska’s pro-legalization activists cited strong public approval of legalization in Colorado. Polls in March and April found that Coloradans support their law by double-digit margins.

Alaska pro-legalization campaign spokesman Taylor Bickford also mentioned law enforcement data that shows Denver’s crime rate has decreased by more than 10 percent since legalization, although critics say there’s no connection with those crime stats and pot.

“People [around the country] are going to become less afraid of this when they see that there aren’t these massive consequences in Colorado,” said Dunbar, who is trying to unseat Republican Rep. Don Young.

There is one way that Colorado is not like Alaska, advocates said — Alaskans may use marijuana more. The state’s residents are statistically near or at the top of marijuana usage in the U.S., meaning that the state is squandering a golden economic opportunity, they say. “There’s a multi-million dollar marijuana industry in this state already, and it’s being run by criminals,” Bickford said.

While Colorado is the subject of increasing national attention, many are urging caution against any rush to judgment.

“It is important to provide for sufficient time for implementation to ensure that all policy is developed and makes sense for the current legislation, as well as newly implemented legislation” in Colorado and in other states, said Natriece Bryant, spokeswoman at Colorado’s Department of Revenue, which regulates the state’s marijuana industry.

“Give us time to see what happens here. … You are not going to have rigorously tested and reviewed scientific data on the numbers here in Colorado yet,” said Ben Cort, a legalization opponent and Project SAM board member. “Why do we have to do this now?”