Colorado: Proposed new alcohol, marijuana laws sure to draw a fight at Colorado State Capitol
Source: The Gazette
By: Joey Bunch
January 24, 2017
Two products that are all about chilling out, liquor and pot, make a lot of people uptight at the Capitol. You might have expected a break after the bruising grocery store alcohol fight last year. The compromise gradually will allow more grocers and major retailers to sell wine and full-strength beer – and rid us of 3.2 percent swill once and for all at up to 20 locations over the next 20 years.
Alcohol has at least three more rounds on the way this session.
Rep. Jovan Melton, a Democrat from Aurora, filed House Bill 1084 to allow hotels to sell a sealed bottles of wine to go. They already can send guests away with one uncorked bottle. The bill’s first hearing is Feb. 9 at 1:30 p.m. before the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee.
Rep. Steve Lebsock, a Democrat from Thornton, is working on a bill to allow local governments to set closing time for bars past the 2 a.m. statewide cutoff.
Another bill would allow a college with a liquor license for one location to branch it out to more spots for what the bill calls a “campus liquor complex.” That sounds fun and convenient. Rep. Yeulin Willett, a Republican from Grand Junction, is sponsoring House Bill 1120. It has been assigned to the Public Health Care and Human Services Committee, but it hasn’t been scheduled for a hearing.
In Colorado we say whiskey is for drinking and water’s for fighting. Really, we fight about both.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving will certainly mount a battle royale against expanding bar hours anywhere. Fran Lanzer, MADD’s Colorado leader, said it would create an incentive to bar-hop across metro regions chasing last call in different jurisdictions. Cops have enough to deal with, he said.
On the other hand, bar owners and their associations could hire an army of lobbyists to finely tailor a message about helping small businesses. That’s how these things are fought.
When it comes to hotel bottle service to go, liquor stores and their associations could hire an army of lobbyists to finely tailor their message about protecting small businesses, and around the rotunda we go.
And any bill that talks about booze on campus should have a water seal in the shape of a target, because a lot of special interests are going to line up to take shots at that, on the subject matter alone. Pool your allowances, brothers of I Tappa Keg. Lobbyists aren’t cheap.
It’s a cycle.
Last year, Gov. John Hickenlooper and then-House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst cited the massive amount of lobbying pressure that pushed the compromise on grocery story wine and good beer sales across the finish line. Everybody but the security guards had a lobbyist, almost.
“You have a situation where there’s an issue that comes up, and if you have a lot of money you just throw it at a lot of lobbyists,” Hullinghorst said in May. “And we saw that, quite frankly, with the whole liquor issue to the point I said, ‘If I’m going to get anything done in the rest of the session I can’t see you folks anymore.’ Nearly everybody in the lobbyist corps was hired to work on that issue by the time they were done.”
Marijuana has its own battles, for sure. Last year, the legislature made it illegal to make a pot edible in the shape of a Gummy Bear or, say, anything Scooby Doo-related. It might provide some giggles to the target market to have an edible Gummy Bear or Velma, but allowing that could attract and harm kids if they swiped a handful of Daddy’s special candy.
Already 10 marijuana-related bills have been filed this session. Most prominently, Senate Bill 63 would set up “marijuana consumption club” license so people could enjoy pot among friends and strangers like having a cold one at the bar.
But marijuana laws are basically four years old, since the legislature convened in 2013 after voters passed legalization in the form of Amendment 64 in 2012. You expect a few years to sort things out.
But liquor laws? We’ve been drinking and fighting in Colorado since we became a state in 1876.
The original state constitution had one specific paragraph about alcohol. That paragraph said you would go to prison for making, importing or selling poisonous liquor or wine, Article XXVIII, Section 5. That left 141 years of paychecks for lawyers, lobbyists and legislators to figure out.
It took until 2008 to get the poisonous booze law out of the state constitution as obsolete. While the rest of the country jumped into the Prohibition in 1919, Colorado went dry on alcohol three years before that.
We fight plenty over whiskey in this state. As fights involving alcohol usually are, it’s way more interesting than a scuffle over water.