Denver’s decision to support the Biden administration’s move to reschedule marijuana drew mixed reactions, with backers saying it’s necessary to help boost declining marijuana sales and provide stability to the industry, while critics said it’s normalizing a drug that is addictive and ultimately harmful to young people. 

“The city of Denver should be weighing the harms to their communities and children more heavily than lining the industry’s pockets with a rescheduling tax write-off,” said Luke Niforatos, the executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “According to state data, Denver’s youth are using marijuana at a higher rate than most of the state, and marijuana addiction among youth is higher than it was before we legalized it.”

“More Colorado teens are using and driving, or have friends who are doing so,” he said. 

Nifaratos added that the move has the potential to unravel much of the work already done to protect these groups.

“Communities like Five Points and other areas with vulnerable populations are fighting to stop the industry from setting up more pot shops,” he said. “Big Marijuana has targeted them just like its investors, Big Tobacco and Alcohol, with a pot shop for every 42 residents of Color in these communities of Denver.”

One Chance To Grow Up, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization formed after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, said Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses has, in the past, shown it understands the critical importance of protecting kids from harm that can come with marijuana commercialization. 

“We are disappointed that the City and County of Denver has chosen to submit public comment in favor of the federal rescheduling of marijuana,” One Chance to Grow Up spokesperson Alton P. Dillard II said. 

Research from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Healthy Kids Survey indicates that in 2023, 12% of Denver high school students reported they used marijuana in the past 30 days, and over 6% reported that they used THC concentrates in the past 30 days. 

Rescheduling will continue the normalization of marijuana in our city and send the message to our youth that this product is safe, although the U.S. Surgeon General has said that there is no known safe amount of marijuana use by adolescents, Dillard added.

“We urge Denver officials to redouble the focus on protecting youth and their still-developing brains as this issue continues to unfold,” he said.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston defended the city’s decision to support rescheduling. 

He said he opposed legalization of marijuana during the campaign 10 years ago, raising the same worries that many do — he didn’t want to see marijuana use increase among young people. He was worried it would be a “gateway” to “hard” drugs, and he was concern about legalization’s public safety implications around cannabis establishments, he said.

The data since then, he argued, showed no increases in those areas.

The marijuana industry, he said, has been “good, civic participants who want to be able to run safe and responsible businesses.”

He views cannabis business, he said, as both a practical matter and an issue of fairness. Marijuana businesses, he said, don’t have access to the same array of resources that other industries do, notably banking.

“It is pretty hard to run a safe and responsible business when you have to hold everything … in cash,” he said. “You can’t bank, and you can’t pay people through regular payroll systems because you’re not allowed under the federal schedule to do that.”  

Others, like Gov. Jared Polis, also see the effort as beneficial for the state.

“This action from the president is pro-freedom, and forward-thinking, and will help our economy and improve public safety. Today we begin to say goodbye to burdensome 280E tax provisions and embrace an expansion of freedoms Coloradans and Americans deeply value,” Polis said in an earlier press statement.

Colorado saw a total of $113 million in marijuana sales in May, according to state data, down more than $80 million from the same month in the state’s peak year of 2021.

“This just comes at a really critical time for them,” Molly Duplechian, the executive director of Denver’s Office of Marijuana Policy and Department of Excise and Licenses, Duplechian told The Denver Gazette in an interview. “This type of change could really benefit and hopefully keep some businesses that are on the brink of closing, keep them around and keep them able to survive here in Denver.”