When the approval of Amendment 64 in 2012 opened the floodgates to legal marijuana sales in Colorado, it also opened a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences. Among them is a host of regulatory shortcomings.

In hindsight, it is now clear how woefully unprepared Colorado’s state and local governments were to serve as watchdogs over the inherently problematic pot trade. Long the domain of the criminal underworld, the industry has mushroomed since legalization into the equally cynical Big Marijuana we know today. Like Big Tobacco a generation ago, Big Marijuana is a behemoth that fights most reasonable efforts by policy makers to rein it in and hold it accountable.

There is mounting evidence of the harm marijuana is causing society – and especially our youth. The more we learn about the wide-ranging impact of today’s hyper-potent pot on children, the more critical it becomes to move swiftly to curb pot’s availability to kids. Though sales to minors is technically illegal, in reality, that prohibition is leaky as a sieve.

Legislation intended to address that concern – by patching at least one of the myriad loopholes in state regulations governing marijuana – was recently introduced at the Capitol and is scheduled to debut in a legislative committee hearing Wednesday. We urge its approval.

The bipartisan Senate Bill 149 would, among other provisions, require the state Marijuana Enforcement Division to carry out at least two compliance checks per retail marijuana outlet each year to ensure they aren’t selling to minors. Not only have the division’s compliance checks been in decline, but they in fact plummeted to 80 in total for all of last year across the entire state. That’s out of an estimated 1,000-plus licensed pot dealers statewide.

The legislation also would require the division to produce an annual report of license violations and enforcement actions regarding marijuana industry businesses and licensees, including the number of underage sale violations in the previous year as well as the number of underage sale sting operations in the previous year.

The bill is a much-needed, if modest, step. Colorado’s kids are vulnerable to pot’s perils.

Unlike the illegal pot of decades past, today’s legal purveyors market it in slickly packaged, fetchingly prepared edibles that appeal to all tastes – and especially among the young and impressionable. Edibles also allow pot to be consumed discreetly.

Meanwhile, as we’ve noted here recently, pot is wreaking havoc on Colorado’s highways. Particularly when consumed in conjunction with alcohol, as is often the case, pot is involved in an ever-increasing share of traffic fatalities. An analysis of 26,000 impaired-driving cases in Colorado in 2019 showed 45% of drivers tested positive for more than one substance, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice. The most common combination was alcohol with THC – the psychoactive drug in marijuana.

There’s also the growing body of research data on the damage latter-day varieties of pot does to the brain. Thornton Democratic state Rep. Yadira Caraveo – the only practicing pediatrician in Colorado’s General Assembly, and a legislative advocate of more effective pot regulations – wrote in a commentary for The Gazette last year:

“Substantial research has shown how these products can exacerbate mental health issues among our youth. …A 2016 paper by researchers at King’s College, London, which reviewed over a dozen studies conducted across the globe, found that people using high-potency THC products daily were five times more likely than non-users to suffer from a psychotic disorder.”

Colorado is at last recognizing the toll of legal marijuana. It’s time for policy makers to step in.

Denver Gazette editorial board