In explaining Denver’s fall from grace in the annual rankings of best cities by U.S. News & World Report, the magazine went right to the problem: drug mayhem.

“After Colorado residents voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, Denver has seen a surge in cannabis-related commerce, from dispensaries to magazines to high-tech paraphernalia like vaporizers, rolling papers, lotions and storage containers – and the industry continues to gain speed,” U.S. News explains, in a G-rated account of the Denver scene.

Consider legalized pot as a gateway policy. The Colorado Legislature and Gov. Jared Polis have rolled out the welcome mat for drug dealers of all types, turning parts of the state’s largest city into a crime-ridden cesspool.

Don’t rely on us for this observation of the obvious. Look to the progressive Washington Post, which sent Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eli Saslow to Denver to describe the sordid landscape.

Saslow shadowed RTD bus driver Suna Karabay, a Turkish Muslim immigrant who has seen Denver go from a civilized city of diverse upward mobility to one of violence, addiction and all varieties of incivility and dysfunction.

In 3,000 words, Saslow describes what he learned and witnessed while riding back and forth on the No. 15 bus from one end of Colfax to the other. His accounts and the accompanying photos would alarm people in the scariest neighborhoods of Washington and most other large cities.

A sample: “There was Havana Street, where, a few months earlier, a woman in mental distress had shattered the windshields of two No. 15 buses, including Suna’s, within five minutes; and Billings Street, where, in the summer of 2021, a mentally unstable passenger tried to punch a crying toddler, only to be tackled and then shot in the chest by the toddler’s father; and Dayton Street, where Suna had once asked a man in a red bikini to stop smoking fentanyl, and he’d shouted ‘Here’s your COVID, bitch!’ before spitting in her face; and Downing, where another No. 15 driver had been stabbed nearby with a 3-inch blade; and Broadway, where, on Thanksgiving, Suna had picked up a homeless man who swallowed a handful of pills, urinated on the bus and asked her to call an ambulance, explaining that he’d poisoned himself so he could spend the holiday in a hospital with warm meals and a bed.”

The essay describes RTD hub Union Station as a hellhole of drugs, crime and homelessness. That led to an inevitable mention of the 2019 law – written by Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Shane Sandridge and embraced by the left – that makes drug enforcement a fool’s errand.

“The police started to arrest people at record rates, making more than 1,000 arrests at Union Station so far this year, including hundreds for drug offenses,” Saslow wrote.

“But Colorado lawmakers had decriminalized small amounts of drug possession in 2019, meaning that offenders were sometimes cited with a misdemeanor for possessing up to 4 grams of fentanyl – enough for nearly 2,000 lethal doses – and then were able to return to Union Station within a few hours.”

This is not a normal big city thing. At Washington’s Union Station, families with small children shop, dine and stroll the grounds in relative safety. Drug dealers go to jail.

Though Saslow focused on Denver, Colorado’s problems don’t stop there. Fentanyl deaths have been soaring at the second-highest rate in the country – the highest when correcting for No. 1 Alaska’s small population base.

Colorado leads the country in auto thefts and bank robberies and has among the highest property crime rates in the country. Violent crime – rapes, murders, assaults – hit a 25-year high this year.

The Democratic Party won control of 100% of Colorado’s state government in 2018. The party’s left-wing base has succeeded in veritably decriminalizing all assortment of crime, calling it “criminal justice reform.”

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress,” said the great Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Crime victims see little justice in Colorado, where policy favors offenders. Word is out. In blocking the flow of progress, Colorado’s lawlessness disables and kills in a wave of social regression unimaginable a decade ago.

It is time to change course, and there is no time to waste. Even the Washington Post has taken notice.

Denver Gazette editorial board