In a night filled with passionate state Senate speeches delivered Wednesday over this year’s $26.8 billion Colorado budget, the most powerful perhaps were the ones given around an amendment that sought to take up to $4 million collected from marijuana sales – slated to pay for drug-related research and services, including addiction treatment – and use the money instead to fuel the Colorado film industry.

Support for and opposition to the proposal crossed party lines.

Amendment 10 was proposed by Republicans Kevin Priola from Henderson, President Kevin Grantham from Canon City and Democrat Nancy Todd from Aurora.

Democrat Todd argued strongly for the amendment in the well, only to be followed by Democrat Cheri Jahn from Wheat Ridge, who argued against it, growing emotional as she did.

“I will just tell you what I can’t do,” Jahn said. “I can’t go out there in the community and face people who have lost loved ones to overdoses from these horrible drugs – from the opioids, the heroin – and people dying from alcohol. I cannot go to them and say, ‘I’m truly sorry, but I took part of the money that was designated to go for treatment, to go to services, everything that had to do with substance abuse and substance use, and give it to the film industry.”

Priola argued in favor of the amendment, citing the great future development opportunities to be found in the immense popularity of video, especially given the way young audiences have been energized by rapidly multiplying video streaming offerings.

But Tim Neville, a Republican from Littleton, unleashed a righteous speech in opposition, drawing on a wellspring of frustration among lawmakers and citizens who argue that promises tied to taxes and fees often are only loosely kept by lawmakers when it comes time to pass the budget every year.

The video below starts with the end of Jahn’s speech and continues through Neville’s, and beyond. Neville begins speaking around the 3:27:27 mark.

“I have to say, I’m insulted by this,” Neville said. “When you take a look at this amendment – I want to go back to what the General Assembly said this (marijuana) money was for.

“They declared that the new retail marijuana tax revenue presents an opportunity to invest in services that support intervention and treatment related to marijuana and other drugs,” Neville said, reading from the statute. “‘The purpose of this section is to prioritize treatment, protecting the state’s youth, and ensuring the public peace and safety,'” he said. “Then it lists a number of things that this money is designed to do – that we’ve agreed it is designed to do.

“‘To educate people about marijuana, to prevent its illegal use, to provide services for adolescents and school-age children in school settings through community-based organizations, to treat, people with any type of substance abuse disorder'” – he said with emphasis – “‘for jail-based and other behavioral health services… for state regulatory enforcement to keep our people safe on the streets, policy coordination, litigation, for law enforcement and law enforcement training, for the promotion of public health, including poison control, prescription drug take-back programs, a marijuana lab testing reference library, other public health services, to study the use of marijuana and other drugs, to research and test industrial hemp or hemp seed’ – the list goes on and on,” Neville said. “And what are we talking about doing with these funds?

“Colleagues I want to be blunt: We’re talking about absconding with these funds, based upon the purposes that we’ve outlined, and using them for a totally different purpose that benefits only a few.

“I urge a no vote – and I urge you to take a look at this,” he said waving the marijuana statute in the air. “If we talk about this [budget] being a moral document, I believe this is an immoral amendment.”

The debate continued and the amendment eventually was voted down.

“Yeah, it got my goat,” said Neville on Thursday. “There we were talking about movies and tourism, but the marijuana cash fund is not an appropriable area of the budget.

“We’re not supposed to do stuff with the long [budget] bill that’s legislative. We already agreed on how to spend that marijuana money. We already had that discussion when we passed the statute. The decision was made.

“You know, I think a lot of people are wondering what happened to that (marijuana) money and whether it’s being appropriated for, let’s just say, creative uses,” he said.

“It’s a little frustrating.”

– john@coloradostatesman.com