Colorado legislature gives final approval to historic marijuana bills

The Colorado legislature made history Wednesday, becoming the first in the country to pass laws regulating recreational marijuana sales and use.

But lawmakers arrived at the historic moment more with trepidation than with enthusiasm about the future in a state where anyone over 21 will soon be able to buy marijuana in special retail stores.

“This is a true game-changer for our state,” Sen. Mark Scheffel, R-Parker, said in raising concerns about the impact of marijuana legalization on kids. “And so I think it is important that we do our best to implement the right regulatory environment and fund it.”

If Gov. John Hickenlooper signs the four major bills on marijuana that the legislature passed this year — and he has indicated he will — this is what the future will hold:

• Marijuana will be sold in specially licensed stores that can also sell pot-related items such as pipes. Only Colorado residents can own or invest in the stores, and only current medical-marijuana dispensary owners can apply to open recreational pot shops for the first nine months. The first stores will open around Jan. 1.

• Colorado residents will be able to buy up to an ounce of marijuana — the maximum it is legal for non-medical-marijuana patients to possess — at the stores. Out-of-staters can buy only a quarter-ounce at a time. Pot must be sold in child-resistant packages with labels that specify potency. Edible marijuana products will have serving-size limits.

• Voters will have the option of imposing heavy taxes on pot sales. A ballot measure set for November will ask voters to approve a 15 percent excise tax and an initial 10 percent sales tax on marijuana. The excise tax will fund school construction. The sales tax will pay for regulation of marijuana stores.

• Incorporated marijuana collectives will be banned. So, too, will marijuana coffee shops, marijuana smoking in bars and government-run marijuana stores. And, though Colorado will have the most liberal laws for marijuana use and sales in the country, it will have the most restrictive laws in the country for marijuana-themed magazines, which, like pornography, will have to be kept behind the counter. Publications such as High Times and The Daily Doobie have vowed to sue.

• Finally, Colorado drivers for the first time will be subject to a stoned-driving limit. Juries will be allowed to presume that anyone testing above the limit was too high to drive.

The bills are the result of an arduous six-month, law-writing process that began in November, when Colorado voters passed a marijuana-legalization measure. With the bills’ passage, a new rulemaking process for marijuana shops by the state Department of Revenue can begin. Prospective pot-shop owners can start applying for licenses in October.

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Rep. Dan Pabon, a Denver Democrat involved in many of the marijuana bills.

Pabon said the bills will keep marijuana within Colorado’s borders and provide a barrier between kids and pot — two important factors in keeping the federal government, which considers all marijuana possession and sales illegal, at bay.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver declined to say what kind of impact the bills will have on the office’s position toward marijuana legalization in Colorado. Instead, Jeff Dorschner wrote in an e-mail that the office is looking at “all aspects of this issue” in its deliberations on how to respond.

A spokesman for Hickenlooper, a legalization opponent, praised the work of lawmakers on the marijuana bills, saying in a statement they “put in place a robust regulatory and enforcement framework, consumer safety measures and a dedicated funding source for state oversight of the industry.”

State Attorney General John Suthers, who also opposed legalization, said the legislature did a “credible job” of creating marijuana regulations, despite “an aggressive and well-financed lobbying effort” by cannabis advocates that Suthers saw as trying to weaken the rules.

Those advocates, though, hardly had their run of the legislature. A citizens group worried about the consequences of marijuana legalization hired equally high-priced lobbyists. And, in the most dramatic showdown over marijuana at the Capitol this year, legalization proponents fought back an effort on the session’s third-to-last day that could have stalled marijuana sales if the taxes on pot didn’t pass.

On Wednesday, marijuana advocates hailed the legislature’s final votes as momentous.

“The passage of these bills marks a major milestone toward the creation of the world’s first legal, regulated and taxed marijuana market for adults,” said Christian Sederberg, one of Amendment 64’s authors.

Sederberg said the bills show that lawmakers can tackle big issues when they work together. The bills were written by a bipartisan committee and received support from both parties in the state Senate.

But the final votes on the bills in the House on Wednesday split along party lines — Democrats voting for the measures and Republicans voting against. That division occurred even as Republicans grudgingly accepted that the last two bills needed to be passed. One of those bills, House Bill 1317, contained the most significant regulations for marijuana stores. The other, House Bill 1318, held the marijuana tax provisions.

“We do need to do something,” Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said. “And that something is House Bill 1317.”

But he joined his colleagues in voting against the bill’s repassage.

The bill moved forward to the governor’s desk anyway, while Colorado moved toward an unprecedented future.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/john_ingold