Colorado’s legal drug conundrum
DENVER — The scene felt like something from a movie.
Thick, skunky clouds of marijuana rose over Civic Center Park as thousands celebrated during Denver’s legal 4/20 celebration.
Though the event secures a permit each year, public consumption of marijuana is officially prohibited across Colorado. Yet many 4/20 attendees had a lit joint in their hand.
“On three, everybody light up,” yelled Fedd The God, a Pennsylvania-based rapper who performed at the Mile High 420 Festival in April.
“I don’t even smoke but f—, it’s 4/20.”
For some, festival-goers lighting up at the park underscored a double standard in Colorado’s “look the other way” approach to public marijuana consumption as legislators once again voted down a law creating safe-use sites for other substance use around the state.
An identity crisis
Since legalizing cannabis in 2012, Colorado has emerged as a national leader in the legalization of other drugs. Voters in 2022 opted to legalize psilocybin, and the state has a law in the books allowing MDMA prescriptions in anticipation of the federal government reclassifying MDMA off the Schedule 1 narcotics list in 2024.
Despite its progressive attitude toward substances backed by therapeutic studies, a bill allowing Colorado cities to build overdose prevention centers with the hope of more safely supporting addiction failed in a state Senate committee for the second year in a row at the end of April.
Those in favor of the bill emphasized that Coloroadans will continue to use drugs, and that overdose-prevention centers would ensure supervising staff can reverse overdoses when needed and keep drug usage away from public spaces.
“Our humanity should demand life-saving care to, at a minimum, give people the opportunity to get into treatment,” said Sen. Kevin Priola, an Adams County Democrat who co-sponsored the bill. “People are dying and they are dying publicly.”
The bill would not have legalized more drugs, but would instead have allowed staff at centers to test drugs for fentanyl and other substances, as well as provide overdose reversal with Naloxone and mental health care.
But those against the bill — including Democratic Senators Kyle Mullica and Joanne Ginal — said the bill as written lacked nuance and data.
“Looking at this bill, there's so much that we need to do to put guardrails up and to make this work the way it should work,” said Ginal, a Larimer County Democrat. “It’s just pretty ambiguous and it seems like there are so many holes in this.”
Had the proposition passed, Colorado cities interested in building overdose prevention centers would be able to do so, but it would not be required. City council members in Denver and Boulder have expressed interest in building centers.
Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, both Democrats, have spoken out against such centers. Polis had mostly been quiet about the issue. When asked about it at a Colorado Sun event, he said “I do support efforts to end homelessness, reduce homelessness — make Colorado safer.”
The Sun reported that a spokesman for Polis said the governor “believes there is great uncertainty nationally about the role of the federal government and how they would enforce these sites that are already operating in other states.”
At a mayoral debate with opponent Kelly Brough, Johnston said the sites “are not the right step for Denver right now.”
Safe-use programs have seen varied success. Vancouver, B.C., ushered in safe-use sites in 2003. Over 21 years, 11,856 overdoses have occurred and all were reversed before a person died. But the sites have received criticism that they increased crime in the neighborhoods around them.
New York City built two safe consumption sites in 2021. Those sites have reversed more than 1,000 overdoses. A study from JAMA Network found crime did not increase in neighborhoods surrounding these sites.
Other opponents of the bill pointed to complaints from those living near sites in Vancouver and New York City — about needles and syringes outside the sites and drug usage spilling over onto the streets — as reasons to vote against the bill.
“We will face increased crimes and disorderliness,” said Greeley Police Chief Adam Turk, who testified against the bill.
Turk said Greeley and Weld County leaders do not want such sites in their communities, and that a neighboring community building one could bring a negative spillover effect.
Others who testified against the bill were concerned that sites would increase drug usage on public transit or that the federal government would penalize Colorado for condoning federally illegal drugs.
Still, Dr. Josh Barocas, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and safe-use site advocate, said the data is clear: banning drugs does not prevent overdose. Making usage safer, however, does.
“We’ve always had drug use and we will continue to have drug use whether or not there's total prohibition,” Barocas said. “These centers allow drug use to happen in a place where you aren’t going to have negative consequences and you may find community or resources to recover from drug use, if that’s what you’re interested in.”
Barocas also said problems in New York and Vancouver could be mediated if sites had more funding and resources. He pointed to Australia and Portugal as success stories of harm reduction done right.
“Really, what you need is to make sure these sites are really, truly, adequately resourced so they can have the staff that make sure nothing is going on outside the center and into the streets,” Barocas said. “When we adequately resource organizations, they thrive, and that’s what happened in Australia and Portugal.”
“What overdose-prevention centers do is they simply say ‘we’re taking out the moral failing aspect of this and we’re just trying to create a space where people don’t feel judged and don’t die,” Borocas said.
Alcohol is responsible for more overdose deaths in the United States than any other drug, and Borocas said it is difficult to argue that alcohol is any “safer” than other substances.
“Other drugs and the people who use them have been stigmatized and demonized,” Borocas said. “There’s the fear of the drug itself but also the fear of people who use certain drugs that has created this morality.”
From counterculture to commercial
April 20 is known as a cannabis holiday. The day’s origins are debatable, but The New York Times reported that the celebration took hold nationwide after a group of high school students made a ritual of meeting up at 4:20 p.m. to smoke weed.
The students established 4/20 as a part of American stoner culture in the 1970s, decades before Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational cannabis in 2012.
Denver’s 4/20 festival — which proclaims to be the world’s largest — began decades ago as a political rally supporting legalized weed. After Colorado legalized cannabis in 2012, the event transitioned into a concert and vendor space.
At the 2024 festival — hosted by JARS Cannabis — large dispensaries and well-known cannabis companies sold merchandise and paraphernalia, though no actual cannabis was sold or gifted.
In Colorado, weed must be purchased inside a licensed dispensary. Dispensaries have popped up throughout the state’s largest cities and smallest towns since legalization, though dozens of municipalities have banned them.
Festival-goers wore shirts promoting nationwide legalization, and dispensaries promoted their products as “calming,” “helpful for sleep,” and “anti-anxiety.”
Barocas said before 4/20 became a music and wellness festival, it was a counter-culture holiday for rebels. Though 4/20 celebrations have become de-facto safe spaces to smoke in public, the intent of the weed holiday was about rejecting mainstream society.
“Historically, 4/20 was never about safe use,” he said. “It’s interesting that now that it's sort of a streamlined culture, it's actually about promoting wellbeing, promoting quality of life, promoting happiness.”
The event’s webpage specified that public cannabis consumption is prohibited, but a Denver Police Department spokesperson said the department did not cite anyone at the festival for public usage. The spokesperson said officers have issued 36 public usage citations so far in 2024.
As thousands lit up in celebration at the Mile High festival, a scene unfolding just across the street told a different story.
An attendee at the Mile High 420 festival holds a lit joint.
Photo: Alison Berg, Rocky Mountain PBS
Eric Fobian stood on a median near the intersection of Colfax Avenue and Broadway Street, a Corona can in hand with a sign that read “please help.” A thick beard, flannel sweatshirt and rain poncho shielded him from the snow.
After two trips to prison, Fobian said he has mostly beat his methamphetamine addiction. He has good days and bad days, but despite the weather, Saturday was a mostly good day.
“Get a f—ing job,” a driver yelled from a car with tinted windows as Fobian spoke with Rocky Mountain PBS. The driver who rolled down the window to yell at Fobian had a bong on his lap.
“You know, it’s kind of silly that these people get to do whatever they want,” Fobian said.
Among with other run-ins with the law, Fobian was arrested in Kansas for possession of marijuana, where cannabis remains illegal.
Fobian said living with addiction and a lack of financial resources makes sobriety feel daunting.
“I was in the throes of my addiction and I never got the proper rehabilitation,” Fobian said. He’s been on and off of the streets for most of his life and is currently housed.
Civic Center Park, where the 420 festival takes place, has been partially closed since 2021 due to “health and safety concerns” after regular reports of needles, syringes and drugs around the park.
Portions of the park are still fenced off, though private events can rent it out and open the entire park to attendees. The two bus stops closest to the park — where Colfax intersects with Broadway and Lincoln — have near-constant police presence, as many unhoused folks take shelter under benches. The surrounding area is lined with tents.
A spokesman for the police department said officers are often called to the area due to stabbings or shootings, though injectable drug usage is also common at the bus stops. The spokesman said officers had made 156 arrests there by April of 2024.
Barocas pointed to the contrast between the 4/20 festival and the Colfax intersection, as “perceived hypocrisy.”
“Civic Center Park fills with marijuana smoke while we’ve got people overdosing on injectable drugs and dying across the street,” Barocas said. “We’ve dehumanized people who use illicit substances.”
Eric Fobian stands on a median in Denver in Downtown Denver asking for money.
Photo: Alison Berg, Rocky Mountain PBS
Drugs market themselves
Many at Denver’s 420 festival said they’d been using cannabis for decades, long before it was legal for recreational usage. Attendees’ reasons for using it included mediating anxiety, improving an eating disorder and coping with PTSD symptoms.
“I don’t think anyone should be arrested for a choice they made that isn’t harming anyone else,” said Sabrina, a festival attendee.
Sabrina now exclusively buys cannabis from licensed dispensaries, but before that, she said she often had no idea what variety of marijuana product she was purchasing from dealers.
“You just kind of hoped for the best,” she said.
Opponents of safe-use sites have expressed concerns about safe-injection sites enabling drug users to continue their usage. But, Borocas said, those who use drugs will continue to do so. Sobriety is not the fore-front goal of a safe-use center, he said.
“Drugs promote themselves,” Borocas said. “Nobody needs to promote drug use. The drugs already do that.”
Jessica Breemen, chief growth and impact officer for harm reduction nonprofit Dance Safe, said overdose prevention sites won’t further anyone’s drug usage into meeting DSM criteria for substance use disorder. Instead, Breemen said, such sites will keep usage safe and contained.
“People opposing this apparently want unsafe use centers, like neighborhood coffee shops, bathrooms and under bridges,” Breemen said.
Colorado lawmakers have tried twice to pass a safe-use sites bill. The lawmakers sponsoring the bill did not respond to requests for comment asking if they would try again in 2025.
Alison Berg is a reporter at Rocky Mountain PBS. Alisonberg@rmpbs.org