The best news to emerge from Colorado’s decade-long experiment with legal recreational marijuana – today being the 10th anniversary – could be the claim by a Big Marijuana mouthpiece in The Gazette last week that the state is “killing its own industry with regulation and taxes.”

If only it were true.

Regulation and taxation of pot are if anything too modest; indeed, the state’s pot peddlers haven’t generated nearly enough tax revenue to compensate Colorado for all the damage they have done. From the carnage on our highways as traffic accidents have soared, to the declining mental health of our youth, pot has played a pivotal role in undermining Colorado’s quality of life.

Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila made that point more eloquently in a recent pastoral letter condemning the insidious spread of recreational marijuana in Colorado.

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“In Colorado, we are now a decade into this experiment,” wrote the spiritual leader of the Denver archdiocese’s 550,000 Catholics. “As more studies come out and more deaths from fentanyl pile up, we now have an overwhelming amount of data that reinforces what we have known to be true all along: the legalization of marijuana and cultural acceptance of drug use have been disastrous to our society.”

As the Archbishop also pointed out in his letter, “We cannot pretend that the legalization and growing cultural acceptance of drugs do not have disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable in our society… for the sake of financial profit.”

Foremost among society’s most vulnerable are Colorado’s kids. The proliferation of legal pot products has made it easier for the typical Colorado middle-schooler to conceal a palm-sized jar of super-potent pot concentrate in a school backpack – than a beer.

While there was a dip in pot experimentation and use among Colorado youth amid the pandemic, marijuana use has been rising among minors over the longer run. Data from the state’s annual Healthy Kids survey revealed pot use by Colorado kids actually skyrocketed between 2017 and 2020. And research by Oregon Health & Science University last year found adolescent pot use across the U.S. has increased dramatically – by about 245% – since 2000.

Meanwhile, data abounds attesting to the damage pot use is doing to our youth’s mental health. A Columbia University study released last May found teens who use pot are two to four times more prone to psychiatric disorders, depression and suicide. Colorado’s own official state webpage on pot use points out its dangers to youth – that it causes learning and memorization deficiencies “weeks after” marijuana use; that it’s especially addictive for young people; that it makes them likelier to attempt suicide.

Alongside all that is the devastating impact pot is having on our roads, especially for young drivers – as statistics on impaired drivers and traffic casualties make clear.

All of which cries out for a crackdown by the Legislature.

How about requiring some sort of tracking on packaging – and stiff penalties for retailers of THC-laced edibles and high-powered concentrates that fall into kids’ hands and track back to those vendors? Limits on the percentage of THC in pot concentrates? Restrictions on the availability of vape devices, which are easily concealable and discreet to use? What about making it a requirement statewide – as Aurora, commendably, does locally – that all pot products at retailers be locked in a safe after business hours as a safeguard against burglars?

Even as we mark this day by wishing our readers a prosperous and productive new year, we cannot in good conscience extend that wish to the cynical and reckless marijuana trade. It has wreaked too much havoc and left a trail of wreckage – especially for Colorado’s youth.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board