An American Lion

I may be all for limited legalization of marijuana, but what’s going on in Colorado is ridiculous. My position has shifted over time, out of what I like to call basic pragmatism. I am what they call an evolving sort of dude.

In my younger days, I was opposed to all kinds of drugs. I was what they would call a “narc” but I had no idea what that meant until some nice young lady explained it to me in 1973. I had gone all throughout the Sixties being called a “narc” but I had no inclination as to what it meant. A lover of iridescent light bulbs? Eater of corn on the cob? Slayer of mighty dragons?

I thought it meant that I looked good in a blazer or that I had a pretty fair grasp of the vernacular. Turns out, it meant I was someone who go tell the cops about who was using drugs.

I did go tell the police about who was using drugs, but Johnny Law didn’t do anything about it. I wrote things down, sent them to the Drug Enforcement Agency, but they only sent back form letters. I took photos, I made audio recordings, and I even found people who were stoned enough to admit on Super 8 film that they were, in fact, breaking the law and using drugs. No one cared.

When I read about how they’ve legalized marijuana in Colorado’s fair little town of Breckenridge, two things come to mind. First, the Google ads are going to be screwed up now for a few days. Second, these idiots are going to screw up and bring down the long arm of the law on themselves:

For business owners ever vigilant about the town’s image, safety-minded resort managers and footloose ski and snowboard vagabonds whose ranks have given towns like this a tinge of wildness since the first ski bum washed a dish or waited a table, marijuana is openly discussed as perhaps never before.

The leader of the group that organized the petition drive leading to the vote, Sensible Colorado, said that Breckenridge, where 71 percent of voters approved the marijuana measure on Election Day, was the opening salvo in a town-by-town strategy toward the goal of a vote on statewide legalization within a few years.

Local efforts, said the group’s founder and chairman, Sean T. McAllister, are now organizing or under way in two other Colorado resort towns, Durango and Aspen. After the election, Mr. McAllister said, people in Montana and Washington called seeking advice on starting voter initiatives.

Breckenridge’s part-time mayor, Dr. John Warner, a dentist who voted against the measure but remained publicly neutral before the election, said the three dozen or so e-mail messages he had received since the vote had been mixed.

About half of the messages were negative, Dr. Warner said, and included comments from people who said they had canceled reservations and would never come back. Other respondents said they were thrilled about the town’s vote and could hardly wait to visit and spend some money.

State and federal law still make marijuana possession a crime in Colorado, but residents here say that local enforcement has not been a high police priority.

All it is going to take is for someone to do something really, really stupid and the Feds will descend on Breckenridge and snatch up all of that juicy, easy-to-prosecute-and-convict, low-hanging fruit. My money is on the one who cuts the deal with the Mexican drug cartels to sell only their finest weed.