In April, Colorado Springs residents will vote, for the second time in five months, whether to allow the sale of recreational marijuana within city limits, after leaders in the conservative city approved a measure that would overturn November’s vote.
Voters will be asked whether to repeal Question 300 on the April 1 ballot when voter turnout is expected to be far lower than record-breaking numbers during November’s presidential election and when the measure passed with 54% of the vote.
Despite Tuesday’s 7-2 vote, the city plans to comply, for now, with November’s election result.
The city will begin accepting recreational marijuana licenses Feb. 10 and will have 60 days to review applications. If the April 1 measure fails, sales of recreational marijuana could begin as soon as April 10. If the measure passes, Colorado Springs will remain as the state’s largest city that has refused to allow the sale of recreational marijuana since it became legal in 2014.
On Tuesday, some city council members suggested another vote was needed because voters were “confused.” Dozens of residents, including veterans, marijuana shop owners and attorneys filled city council chambers, arguing that another vote would be undemocratic and could set a worrisome precedent for future elections.
“Question 300 is no longer about regulating marijuana. It’s now about what you stand for — respecting the will of the voters or governing by fiat,” Tom Scudder, president of the Colorado Springs Cannabis Association and owner of medical marijuana shops, said Tuesday. “You all want a do-over, you want a mulligan, and that doesn’t exist in politics, when it comes to the will of the voters.”
Councilmember Dave Donelson said he heard from residents in his district that they did not understand the ballot question in November.
“It talked about medical marijuana shops. It did not clearly say, legalize recreational marijuana sales in the city of Colorado Springs,” Donelson said. “So I believe there was confusion among voters. Was it all voters? Absolutely not. Was it even the majority? I don’t think so. Was it enough? Was it 11,000 voters? I think it may have been.”
Councilmember Yolanda Avila, who voted “no” on Tuesday, said she didn’t receive any emails or calls from residents saying they were confused until last Monday, after the city council suggested putting the measure on the ballot again.
Question 300 passed in November by a 22,372-vote margin, 130,677 to 108,305. In the same election, voters also defeated a measure that would have banned recreational marijuana in Colorado Springs by a 2,739-vote margin.
Mark Grueskin, an attorney who helped draft the language of Question 300, said it would be a mistake to mistrust the voters’ understanding of the question’s language, which council members approved before it appeared on the ballot in November.
“The bottom line is this: Voters told you, in no uncertain terms, what policy they wanted at the 2024 election. You might disagree, and my guess is you do — that’s your right, just as it was their right to tell you what policy they preferred — but it’s a mistake to mistrust voter understanding of a clear ballot title that the title board and this body in its own words, ratified confirmed and approved,” Grueskin said.
“This is a case of too little, too late to complain that voters were mystified when they approved Question 300, particularly when those complaints are based on secondhand reports from anonymous voters whose concerns cannot be vetted in public in the light of day. If those voters exist, they sat on their hands and ignored their legal remedies to address those supposed concerns when they had the chance to do so. That’s on them.”
The new question that will appear on the April 1 ballot, asking voters to repeal Question 300, is flawed, Grueskin said, and adds surplus language that is “gaged to tilt the political debate.”
Pending the outcome of April’s election, recreational marijuana sales will see a sales tax of 5%. The generated revenue will go toward a fund that will support public safety programs, mental health services and post-traumatic stress disorder treatment programs.
Just eight weeks before the November election, the city council also voted 7-2 to approve a zoning ordinance that would require any future recreational marijuana dispensaries to be at least 1 mile from day cares or schools.
The ordinance would have effectively prevented any of the existing medical marijuana shops in the city from applying for recreational cannabis licenses. The council voted to change the buffer to 1,000 feet earlier this month, consistent with the zoning regulations that voters approved as part of Question 300.