Colorado Governor: Legalizing Marijuana Was a ‘Bad Idea’

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) said on Friday that his state’s decision to legalize marijuana was a “bad idea” and that he wishes he could go back in time and reverse the 2012 ballot initiative. In that referendum, Coloradans voted 55 to 45 percent to legalize marijuana despite Hickenlooper’s strong and outspoken stance against it.

“You don’t want to be the first person to do something like this,” he said, highlighting the difficulties of creating a regulatory structure “from scratch” without support even from the federal government. “We weren’t so crazy about being on the cutting edge — the bleeding edge — of legalizing marijuana.”

Hickenlooper, speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, also said he would have reversed the will of the voters if he had the power: “If I could’ve, you know, made a magic incantation, waved a wand the day after the election, I would’ve reversed the election and said, ‘this is

Hickenlooper also said the jury is “still out” on whether other states should follow suit. In his YouTube interviews yesterday, President Barack Obama acknowledged that more states are likely to follow suit with legalization. He also said the federal government should not spend its resources to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that already legalized it.

Marijuana is currently legal in four states: Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.

Watch the video below, via CNBC:

[Image via screengrab]

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