Given the alarming toll that impaired driving has been taking on Colorado’s highways, you’d think the top priority of our state government would be to make it harder to get tanked up – or high – and get behind the wheel.

Instead, as reported by Colorado Politics, the state Marijuana Enforcement Division is pondering a pitch by so-called “hospitality” marijuana businesses to loosen the rules for use on premises. The purpose of hospitality pot parlors – OK’d by the Legislature in 2019 following legalization in 2012 – is to offer users a place to partake, as bars do for drinkers.

So, revising the rules would make it easier to get high and get behind the wheel.

Big Marijuana and its well-oiled lobby made their plea for looser rules at a hearing the other day before the marijuana division. On the table are proposed regulations sought by the industry for raising daily pot sales limits for hospitality rooms to the same as those governing the state’s retail shops. The changes would allow for up to an ounce of marijuana to be sold daily, as well as up to 100 mg of edibles – it’s currently 20 mg – and eight grams of concentrate. As a part of the industry’s push, there’s even a proposal for “spa-type” establishments that would fall under the pending, laxer standards for hospitality businesses.

Stay up to speed: Sign-up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Fortunately, Big Marijuana’s big-money mouthpieces weren’t the only ones on hand at the hearing. As noted in the Colorado Politics report, state and other advocates for traffic safety showed up to talk down the proposal.

The chief the Colorado Department of Transportation’s highway safety office told the panel more drivers involved in fatal crashes are testing positive for THC, the psychoactive chemical in pot. And half of all drivers who are tested show levels above 5 nanograms per milliliter, the state standard for THC intoxication. 

“We have an impaired driving problem in Colorado,” the department’s Glenn Davis said. He noted the current rates of impaired driving have not been seen in the state since the 1990s.

Meanwhile, an analyst with the state’s Department of Public Safety said overall detection rates for THC went from 18% in 2016 to 29% in 2022. The department has also seen a gradual rise over the same time period for drivers who test positive for THC at the 5 mg/ml level.

About one out of every three drivers convicted of a DUI in 2020 was involved in a crash, the department says. And those crash rates increased for drivers who tested positive for both alcohol and THC, to about 36%. For those who tested positive for alcohol, THC and another drug, it increased to 39%.

An extensive 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 chemical in marijuana – followed by alcohol combined with other drugs, the analysis found.

And yet, the state is considering easing up on pot users – to wreak even more havoc on our highways and byways – all so that they can enjoy the convenience getting high on their way home from work?

Advocates also contend they want to create more opportunities for more “hospitality rooms” to open for business – because the current limits on them are too restrictive. Big Marijuana needs to make more money, after all.

Isn’t there already enough carnage on Colorado’s roads? Why is this preposterous proposal even on the table?

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board