MILE HIGH CITY FOLLOWS OUR LEAD ON PRO-MARIJUANA VOTE

We're trendsetters.

Way back in 2004, Columbia voters were asked for the second time to
pass an ordinance that would, in effect, decriminalize possession of
small amounts of marijuana. A similar effort had failed a year earlier.

Last fall, we agreed with the potheads who wanted us to leave them
alone, buying their argument, apparently, that college kids who smoke
a little doobie shouldn't be punished by losing financial aid. That
was the plea of the pro-pot crowd. Federal law takes away needed
student aid from college students who end up with state drug charges
on their records. It would be a travesty if our pot-smoking college
students weren't allowed the opportunity to expand their minds because
a little indiscretion caused them to lose their ability to go to
school. That's what the pot smokers told us. We bought it.

Since that vote, other cities, big cities, have followed our
lead.

The first one was Oakland. It's in California, of course, and right
across the bay from free-wheeling San Francisco, so nobody really pays
attention to anything folks vote on out there. Let's face it, the
entire state lives under a haze of some drug that renders its populace
unrecognizable to the rest of the nation. So when Oakland passes a pot
law, nobody cares.

But Tuesday, a city of real down-to-earth folks much like us
Midwesterners joined in on the marijuana bandwagon.

Mile High City was never so aptly named.

By a pretty decent margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, the voters of
my hometown, Denver, passed Initiative 100, a measure much like
Columbia's that decriminalizes pot. Like our leaders, the Mile High
city council will now be bound to abide by an ordinance that says pot
possession is among the city's lowest-priority crimes. Denver's law
actually goes a step further than ours, legalizing possession of pot
under 1 ounce. In other words, the residents are asking cops to look
the other way.

And like our city, the cops are giving the residents a collective
bird, one finger, held high in the air, telling the pot smokers where
they can put their new law.

God bless America.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers made it clear after the vote
that state law supercedes anything the city of Denver does, and he
still expects law enforcement to put pot smokers in jail.

It's similar to the response from Columbia law enforcement officials
last fall. State patrolmen, county deputies and university police all
said they were bound by state law and would enforce it. Columbia
police said they would follow the law, but only grudgingly. Then, this
spring, police announced their own effort to bring about a referendum
to overturn the law. The petition drive fizzled, and the cops and pot
advocates started negotiating over how to keep Columbia's law and
compromise on its enforcement. Those negotiations continue.

The most striking difference in the two votes, though, has to do with
strategy and what worked in Denver.

According to Denver news accounts, the group advocating pot
decriminalization there focused on a unique argument that rightly
angered opponents. They suggested that legalizing pot would decrease
domestic violence. Following logic that proves some of them have
smoked way too much, they suggested that since folks who smoke pot are
mellow, compared with alcohol drinkers who sometimes have bouts of
violence, the city would be better off and would protect women by
decriminalizing weed.

The group targeted the city's mayor, who owns a brew pub. It put up a
billboard showing a battered woman. "Reduce family and community
violence in Denver," it read.

The voters bought it. And national pot proponents are paying
attention.

Coming soon to a city near you: another pot proposal that doesn't ever
mention the word "marijuana."

That's what bothers Suthers most about the vote, and it's what
bothered Columbia cops when this city approved its proposition. They
think proponents pulled the wool over our eyes. They think they hid
their true agenda under a haze of happy smoke.

"I understand the debate about legalization and whether our drug laws
are constructive. But I wish we would have a full-out debate instead
of these peripheral issues that accomplish just about nothing,"
Suthers said.

After the Denver vote, the national debate is sure to intensify.

Meanwhile, local cops will continue to enforce state laws. Yesterday,
on Interstate 70, the road that connects the pot-loving cities of
Columbia and Denver, two Indiana men were arrested by state troopers
in Callaway County. A drug-sniffing dog found 39 pounds of pot in the
car. What if the men were simply intending to sell the so-called
harmless drug one legal ounce at a time in cities that believe in
turning the other way? Is that a crime?

That's the debate our nation needs to have.

One mile-high city at a time.