A new poll suggests that 61% of Colorado voters think that Legalization is good for the state, but are the people being mislead?

Photo Source: Weedist

 A new poll released suggests that Colorado voters are happy with legalization, with 61% saying that it's been good for their state. A recent article in the Washington Post by, None other than, Christopher Ingraham has a lot of claims with a few links to back them up. But what I was able to find were connections to the marijuana industry and their supporters.
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      In the Washington Post article by Christopher Ingraham "Most Colorado voters say legal weed has been good for the economy" he lays out how he got this information. The first problem though is that Ingraham is a supporter of legalization. So of course he is going to manipulate the data he's going to report. In his article he cites two sources for his data as being the Cato Institute and Public Policy Polling. When reading the article you will see that the poll by Public Policy Polling was commissioned by the pro 

legalization organization Marijuana Policy Project. This means that MMP not only paid for the poll but also drew up the questions to be asked. When you look at the polls questions you will see that they really don't delve past asking if they felt that legalization was good for the state. There is also a very important demographic that is missing in this poll and that is location of the one answering the questions. Most of the support for legalization in Colorado sits in three major areas and that is Denver, Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Those areas also hold the biggest portion of Colorado voters. The Denver Metro area is home to about 55% of the state alone. So with that being said, how can we take this poll seriously when it is paid for by a biased organization and is missing important data?

Now onto the Cato Institute who has a very prominent pro marijuana activist sending them checks. George Soros, who is on the Drug Policy Alliance Board of Directors, is also one of the top funders of the Cato Institute. The when you look into the the analysis of the data by this entity you will see that one of the lead authors is also a very outspoken proponent of legalization in Rhode Island. She has authored several papers in support of legalization and has also given interviews in support as well. So now we have two sources from Ingraham that have been found to be biased in nature.  So far his article is falling apart. piece by piece.

Courtesy of Pueblo For Positive Impact

Ingraham also cites information that appears to be from the Colorado Healthy kids Survey when he refers to teen use being flat. Other stats like "crime after legalization is down" which is a NORML talking point which is also not completely accurate. If you recall, the Healthy Kids Survey was addressed in one of the very first articles on this website.  The data from the Healthy kids survey was incomplete since it didn't include students from some of the biggest districts in the state. As for his claim that crime is down since legalization, crime in Denver rose again in 2015 with homicides being at a 10 year high. Just about every other category in violent crime rose in 2015. So again we tear apart another portion of Ingraham"s article. 

With the above now we have to ask ourselves, is legalization really working in Colorado? The quick answer is No. With teen use up, Crime up and the tax revenue barely registering in the states budget it is safe to say that legalization is not working in Colorado. Legalizers like to say that legalization is inevitable but the only thing inevitable about legalization is that the perception of harm will continue to drop which will lead to more teen use, higher rates of ED visits, more marijuana related DUI's and traffic fatalities and the states budget won't be affected by the minimal income from taxation.  


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