Welcome to Denver — a ‘hellhole’
of drugs
Washington Examiner,
by
Wayne Laugesen
Original Article
Posted By: Happy Place USA,
8/2/2022 8:32:30 AM
Friends and family arrived for a graduation in May at the University of Denver. We forgot to warn them.
Once a cosmopolitan utopia of clean, safe, family-friendly neighborhoods and parks, Denver now looks and feels like a drug orgy. The stench of marijuana wafts through neighborhoods where a small percentage of family dwellings have transitioned into pot farms. Walking through much of Denver and other Colorado cities, one becomes accustomed to stepping over and around growing numbers of full-time drug users living on sidewalks, parks, medians, and lawns.
The broad-based degradation started when voters approved Amendment 64 in 2012,
Reply 1 - Posted by:
ARKfamily 8/2/2022 8:48:21 AM (No. 1235387)
Thank you, Barack Obama, for legalizing marijuana. I know what it did to my brother. . .
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
J-Dog 8/2/2022 9:05:19 AM (No. 1235408)
This author is accurate. It’s very bad here. I live in the country but have to go to Denver for work and see it every day. Nowhere feels safe and it’s spreading out to the suburbs. This has been done to us by both democrats and republicans.
25 people like this.
Was recently in Fort Collins, and while sitting in an outside cafe, the smell of cannabis was pretty noticeable in the downtown area.
9 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Dodge Boy 8/2/2022 9:08:10 AM (No. 1235416)
This is precisely why my wife and I left the Peoples' Republic of Denver after 45 years. It was once the nicest cow town in the west. Denver is fast becoming another Detroit. The dims have ruined another once-fine city. Everything they touch ends up like Denver. Western Colorado is home now but i hope the societal decay the dims tend to bring never finds its way here.
25 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
NorthernDog 8/2/2022 9:14:55 AM (No. 1235425)
It will probably only get worse. Colorado may soon allow the widespread use of psychedelic mushrooms. My understanding is it's easy to overdose on them or have 'bad trips'. And of course the risk of toxic mushrooms being consumed will increase too.
15 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
PageTurner 8/2/2022 9:21:54 AM (No. 1235434)
This is the story every time pot is legalized. There's a reason Zurich and Amsterdam cracked down on it and Alaska reversed it years ago. It always leads to this.
21 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
bldrrepub 8/2/2022 9:47:09 AM (No. 1235456)
Nice to see Wayne Laugesen writing again. A libertarian at the time, he bought the Boulder alt-weekly and the libs heads exploded on the paper's editorial direction.
12 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Maggie2u 8/2/2022 9:59:25 AM (No. 1235469)
In 2004, my mother, while on a trip to her hometown in Nebraska became critically ill. She was flown to a hospital in Fort Collins. I flew down to stay with her and we were there for 3 weeks. I was impressed by the town and how friendly everyone was. A teen-age boy, leaving a grocery store, stopped and waited for me to get close and he opened and held the door open. I sure hope the city hasn't been destroyed by the druggies and the leftists. It would be quite a shame.
Oh, BTW...here's looking at you Greg Gutfeld and Kat Timpf. Both of them think all drugs should be legalized. Doesn't work out in practice does it?
10 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Ida Lou Pino 8/2/2022 10:11:35 AM (No. 1235486)
The "War On Drugs" has made great progress over the past 52 years. Let's keep it going for another 52!
By the way - - aren't there laws against public intoxication? And why aren't they being enforced?
11 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Kate318 8/2/2022 10:13:31 AM (No. 1235488)
My brother & SIL—both big libs—live in Denver. Many years ago I asked them if they were afraid that Colorado might turn into a Midwest version of California, in light of all the transplants. They immediately became defensive, at first pretending they didn’t know what I meant. Eventually, they conceded that that would never happen because the more rural areas were still very conservative. I always chuckle to myself at that inadvertent admission that the problems come from the left. They now all grow marijuana in their gardens, and one of the biggest problems is those plants being dug up and stolen.
I always thought Colorado would’ve been a nice state in which to retire. Now, I’m thinking Montana, and hoping in the meantime that Colorado doesn’t infect my home state of Nebraska right next door.
13 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Gordon Mills 8/2/2022 10:33:08 AM (No. 1235516)
#1, 'harmless' Marijuana was basically the reason my son lost his life.
10 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Gordon Mills 8/2/2022 10:35:58 AM (No. 1235522)
It's not just Denver. IMHO, the increasing acceptance and widespread use across the country can be correlated to the decline of society and degradation of institutions. Oklahoma now has 11,000 + licensed drug dealers.
6 people like this.
Beautiful cities trashed with the assistance of their own voters: Denver, San Francisco, Seattle....
10 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
DVC 8/2/2022 11:07:05 AM (No. 1235563)
It's called "dope" for a good reason.
8 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
RockiesFan 8/2/2022 11:58:21 AM (No. 1235635)
I’ve lived in Denver for ten years. When I moved here there were not homeless camps virtually at the end of exit ramps and under bridges. There was not loads of trash along the interstate. There were not panhandlers at the end of every exit ramp and dangerous window washing has recently started at stoplights as well. Denver has not only been invaded by legal weed but also Californians fleeing their hellhole state. Denver is a beautiful city with amazing amounts of city parks, waking paths, great sports and culture, and 300 days of sunshine with generally mild winters (at least compared to my native Iowa) and breathtaking views of the Rocky Mountains. Liberal white suburban ex-Californians have turned Colorado from a red state to a blue one. Shame.
11 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Philipsonh 8/2/2022 12:11:26 PM (No. 1235659)
I and my family lived in Littleton ,and worked in Denver, some decades ago. We were very sad to have to leave ( for work ). When people asked me how I felt about Denver, I told them it was like the Garden of Eden. THEN, one of the nicest places on Earth. NOW, from what I see in the news, not so nice at all.
6 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
PrayerWarrior 8/2/2022 12:13:51 PM (No. 1235662)
A girlfriend from Colorado told me that once marijuana was legalized there, all crime increased 40-50% from burglary, drunk driving, home invasions, hold ups (on streets in broad daylight) and on and on. Don't tell me that legalized narcotics will do any good for a society. It only leads to crime, addiction, murder, broken homes and destroyed communities. The devil comes to kill, rob and destroy. He's behind the drug world.
5 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
formerNYer 8/2/2022 1:07:41 PM (No. 1235709)
I'm not buying the pot has made this a hell hole, I'm blaming soft on crime d'rats!
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
JimK 8/2/2022 1:24:40 PM (No. 1235722)
I have lived a few blocks from University of Denver (DU) for 34 years. What this article says is correct but understated. The fact is that Colorado gets over $30,000,000 per MONTH in marijuana taxes and license fees. This has steadily grown since legalization and shows no sign of slowing. I cannot drive 2 miles to and from work without seeing some stupid and or dangerous traffic violation. Running red lights and stop signs is epidemic. Police cannot report MJ-related accidents because there is no roadside sobriety test for cannabis. Californians have ruined this state. I may have to retire to Wyoming.
4 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Vaquero45 8/2/2022 1:57:04 PM (No. 1235746)
I had to work near Denver for seven years, and often had to go downtown. I don't go there anymore unless I have to, and when I have to go, I carry a gun. Denver's mayor is a black Democrat. That's his only qualification for the job. He's incompetent. Together with our feckless crapweasel homosexual governor, they've turned Denver into a third-world garbage dump.
2 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
zephyrgirl 8/2/2022 3:32:24 PM (No. 1235830)
I live in the Denver suburbs, and used to go downtown all the time to meet friends. My first clue things had changed was when I drove into a parking garage early one morning and found homeless people camping in one of the vacant spaces. Then my friends said they preferred to come out to the suburbs to meet for breakfast or lunch. Slowly, but surely, my trips downtown declined. The last time I was downtown (in late January), there were homeless everywhere. I can't imagine what it is like in warm weather. So sad. Denver was once a great place.
2 people like this.
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I haven't been to Denver in about 15 years, it used to be a great town. Guess I'm not going back anytime soon.