Colorado Displays Pioneer Image With New Pot Law

I was driving down the street the other day and I heard this really odd commercial about the NBA legend and superstar Julius 'Dr. J' Irving.  The commercial talks about how he loved the game of basketball as a young person, but it didn't always love him back.  Rebounding and jumping came natural, but dribbling and shooting with accuracy were a struggle.  But he stuck with it and eventually became Dr. J, the legend.

Makes you want to go get a fifth of Crown Royal doesn't it?

When I discovered that this was a Crown Royal commercial, I started to wonder what the future of spokesperson work will look like in the weed industry.  Is this campaign one for  Snoop Lion to do all by himself, or will the day come when we have Blake Griffin reminding us how he could't dribble too well, but boy could he get high?

They still ban cigarette ads on television, but they've got plenty of roadside billboards with hot women or cool cowboys to encourage a puff or two.  I would like to think that our debate over the ethics of marijuana would lose some steam given our hands in the cookie jar of casino's in the mountains or lottery tickets and cigarettes and liquor and pharmaceutical drugs, which are turning doctors into pushers.  We spend billions on marketing all of these vices and very little discouraging the addictions that feed each industry. If weed can feed the need in our struggling schools, I would rather tax usage that already exists instead of finding new revenues to fight addictions and still have our schools struggle with funding.  Better students build better people.  Better people build better families.

Simply put, morality is best achieved with stronger families not stronger laws.

I am Colorado (the unofficial ambassador in fact) and I watched the whole process of this law.  I signed the clipboard in front of the grocery store every time they organized to force this issue to the next ballot in Colorado.  My first thought was, damn.  You can actually force a popular vote with a bunch of grocery store signatures?  It instantly felt like the government of the people stuff that we learned of in school.

This law came in multiple steps and did not succeed right away, so for some time I assumed that it might struggle to get through, and it would be more about criminal prosecution for possession, not retail shops.  I'll admit that I did not realize that California had already paved the way with it's medical marijuana industry, but I can't imagine that even those pot pioneers expected to see Colorado destroy the Prohibition of Pot so quickly.  My home of birth is a place of pioneers also, and no one is ever called a pioneer for a movement that becomes forgotten.

Rocky Mountain High....... Colorado.  (Any John Denver look alike's out there.  I've got some marketing ideas to pitch to you).