The Colorado House on Wednesday – the last day of the legislative session – had perhaps the most “Colorado” marijuana legislative debate ever. But it got weird.
An effort to define the prohibition on “open and public” marijuana consumption devolved into a bizarre debate over whether people could smoke pot on their front porches.
“People have asked, ‘How does this impact my edible consumption? I like to put trays and buffets of edibles all around my front porch and consume to my heart’s content. How will this affect that practice?’ The answer is it won’t have any impact at all, because this only has to do with lighting up a joint or smoking a bong,” said Rep. Dan Pabon, D-Denver, who led the charge in the House.
“Someone else said, ‘What about my vaporizer pen? Sometimes I walk into the Capitol and I have my vaporizer pen. Will this impact my use of the vaporizer pen?’ The answer is ‘no.’ This will have no impact on using your vaporizer pen. You can have 100 people on the front porch; 1,000 if your front porch is that big.”
And Pabon was the rationale one. The debate got as loopy as an edible gone wrong, spurring a competition between the 1990s television sitcoms “Friends” and “Martin.”
“Oh. My. God.”
No, I’m not making this up. It seemed like the whole legislature was high.
The legislation, which was focused on the “open and public” issue, was amended to address porch smoking. A compromise would have allowed porch smoking as long as it involved only five people other than the residents of the home, what lawmakers referred to as a “party of five” rule, also triggering memories of ’90s.
Lawmakers met twice in negotiations to discuss the front porch issue. But the House couldn’t come to agreement, rejecting the compromise, meaning the two chambers couldn’t reach a deal.
While that debate on those discussions went on, critical bills remained on the calendar. One of those measures would have fully funded the Colorado Energy Office. That bill failed, meaning staff members might lose their jobs at the Energy Office. Some say a compromise could have been reached on that. Who knows? What’s for sure is that lawmakers sure spent a lot of time talking “chronic” on the front porch.
“Smelly cat, smelly cat, it’s not your fault.”
I asked Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, what he thought about having a marijuana “party of five” on his front porch. “My porch?” he laughed, before getting serious. “I have a 14-year-old son. There will be no pot anywhere remotely close to my porch.”
So, how the heck did “Friends” and “Martin” get dragged into this pretty absurd debate? An image of the cast of “Friends” was displayed to lawmakers to demonstrate which of them could get high on the porch and which couldn’t. Apparently Rep. Jovan Melton, D-Aurora, is not a fan of the show.
“I didn’t watch a lot of ‘Friends,’ I watched ‘Martin,’ and Martin was the only one who lived in his building, so it would be okay for Martin and Gina and Pam and Cole to smoke, but if Bruh-Man and Sheneneh came over, then one of them’s got to sit out,” Melton said.
“You so crazy!”
Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, accused his colleagues of attempting to ban getting drunk on your front porch also.
“You guys can’t throw parties in your house anymore with alcohol because marijuana is supposed to be regulated the same way,” he claimed.
Things fell so far down the pothole that at one point the debate turned to ashing out a pipe, which Urban Dictionary defines as, “The state of completion of a pipe or other smoking device reaches once all the substance within it is reduced to ash.”
Melton referred to the proposal as “limitations that literally say that you can smoke and you can have five friends that smoke, but if your neighbor comes over then somebody’s got to ash it out, or somebody’s got to sit and watch.”
“Yes, we’re talking about ash now,” Melton laughed, as an obstreperous and often distracted chamber occasionally listened in.
I don’t know if it gets anymore Colorado than what happened in the legislature on Wednesday. I’m also not sure I’ve seen it any weirder. I’m just sad they didn’t settle the debate over whether “Friends” or “Martin” is the better show.
credit:coloradopolitics.com
