I was inactive on my blog last week as part of my electronic moment of silence after the passing of my hero Jack Herer. I have spent the last couple days catching up on what I missed, fielding e-mails, and working on building our activism database. There was one topic that was very alarming to me; last week Colorado Senator Chris Romer received what he described as a ‘death threat’ due to his pursuit of smashing the Colorado dispensary scene. I have been digging, trying to find a transcript of the phone call, but my efforts have been fruitless. Maybe a reader could help out with that? I’m dying to know what the exact words were.
From blog posts I have read, “Romer received a profanity-laced voicemail on April 20, the unofficial holiday for marijuana, from a man who said that ‘drug dealers’ would likely shoot him for raising the nonrefundable application fees for people looking to open medical marijuana centers.” As one blogger wrote, “WHO said the caller was a marijuana activist, or dispensary owner?” Another blogger wrote, “I don’t believe the caller was a dispensary owner, nor a mmj activist, but rather somebody who wanted to shine a bad light on them. Perhaps a DEA agent? Maybe a friend of Romer…Maybe a pharmaceutical company rep. who understands that thousands of patients are choosing marijuana over their pills.”
I have the same question for Senator Romer that Colorado attorney Brian Vicente is posing, “why didn’t you go to the police immediately if you felt the call was a valid ‘threat’ against your life?” Are we supposed to believe that Senator Romer noticed the voicemail icon on his phone, listened to the voicemail, and thought to himself, ‘Gee, this is really scary stuff. Someone wants to end my life. Clearly I should go to every media outlet and show it to them…nevermind the fact that it coincides with fear mongering tactics in support of my legislation…nevermind the fact that police handle death threats, not journalists…” That is the most unlikely story I have ever heard.
A more likely chain of events are as follows: Senator Romer is sitting in his office with a bunch of conservative politicians. They are commending him on what a great job he is doing pretending to be a Democrat, and asking him what other nasty tricks he has up his sleeve. He then gives them the general idea that ‘he needs some type of fear tactic in order to gain support for his anti-medical marijuana legislation.’ Since Senator Romer and his lackey’s possess limited brain power, it probably took a couple of days to hatch the prank phone call. From there, the rest is history.
So why is Chris Romer using a prank phone call to gain support for his legislation? Clearly he is trying to distract the public while he adds toxic amendments to his already controversial legislation. According to media reports I have read out of Colorado, he is trying to add the following changes:
Ban people under the age of 23 from entering medical marijuana centers
Raise the non-refundable application fees for a medical marijuana center to up to $35,000
Require centers with 300 patients or more to have licensed medical or message professionals on site for at least 30 hours per week.
Lawmakers are scheduled to hear HB 1284 today at 2 p.m. at the Old Supreme Court Chambers, 200 E. Colfax Ave. Public comment will be allowed at the hearing. It would be great to have MMJ activists out in full force to let the politicians know that this is BS, whether it’s in the House or Senate.
Click here for the current version of HB 1284.
Photo by Coloradosenate.org
