On April 15, the Colorado House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed House Bill 1352, which nibbles at the edges of some of the more egregious aspects of the disastrous war on drugs by reforming some of Colorado’s controlled substance statutes.

This is a hugely important step for Colorado lawmakers in taking back their rightful prerogative to both write, and when necessary, re-write the state’s criminal code from the irrational drug law regime foisted on Coloradans by the federal government

In 1992, Colorado lawmakers enacted the Uniform Controlled Substances Act (USCA, Article 18 of Colorado’s criminal code).  The act was written to “complement” the federal Controlled Substances Act, and designed to bring state drug laws in to conformity with federal drug laws. The act, among many other things, created numerous new drug offenses in Colorado, and sentencing enhancements for those offenses.

In our Constitutional Republic, the authority and responsibility to write the state’s criminal law lies with the legislature.  In other words, the 1992 General Assembly willingly subjugated its prerogative to write Colorado’s criminal law to the dictates of federal drug war bureaucrats. What was the result?

Over the last several decades, the percentage of inmates whose most serious sentencing offense is a drug offense has quadrupled to around 20 percent of Colorado’s prison population. Drug offenders are by far the single largest category of new admissions to Colorado prisons at around 23 percent of annual admissions.

There are more drug offenders in Colorado prisons today than the entire prison population 25 years ago when the state’s inmate population was around 3,500.

In a January 1992 issue paper, published before the UCSA was enacted, Independence Institute Research Director Dave Kopel laid out the dangers in allowing unelected and unaccountable federal employees to decide Colorado law, asking:

Is an increment of presumed advantage in the drug war worth the price of warrantless searches, extreme and irrational punishments, pointless additional prison crowding, expansion of prosecutors’ power to take property from people never found guilty of a crime, and further abdication of state powers to federal bureaucrats?

The drug policy reform recommendations incorporated into House Bill 1352 are actually quite modest, having been exhaustively vetted by both the Drug Policy Task force of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice and by the voting members of the Commission itself, which includes representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office, the Department of Public Safety, prosecutors, chief’s of police, county sheriffs, drug treatment providers, legislators, and numerous other interested parties.

The Independence Institute has long advocated drug law reform.  In this 2005 issue paper, “Getting Smart on Crime: Time to Reform Colorado’s Drug Offense Sentencing Policies,” I recommend lowering both use and possession of illegal drugs from felony crimes to misdemeanors and the creation of sentencing grid for controlled substance offenses separate and distinct (and much less draconian) from the sentencing structure for violent and property crimes.

Here is what HB 1352 does with regard to drug possession offenses:

Here is what HB 1352 does with regard to marijuana offenses:

The bill is sponsored by Colorado Springs Republican Representative Mark Waller and by Senators Pat Steadman (D-Denver) and Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield). HB 1352 now heads to the Senate, and is scheduled to be heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, April 26.