Legal Pot Adds to Denver's Homeless Problem - East Idaho News
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Legal Pot Adds to Denver’s Homeless Problem

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GETTY 072914 coloradopot?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1406639080649iStock/Thinkstock(DENVER) — They’re going to Colorado to get high but instead, the lure of legal marijuana is leaving many young people high and dry.

Since the use of up to one ounce of pot became legal in December 2012, Denver, Colorado, has seen as influx of visitors who have come to stay. When sales of marijuana were allowed last January, even more people from out of state have shown up.

And therein lies the problem, one that supporters of legal pot probably didn’t anticipate.  Denver says that its homeless population has grown in the past year-and-a-half and the majority of the newcomers are teens and people in their 20s.

Not everyone who comes to the city is necessarily a slacker. Some have said that they want to find work in Colorado’s booming marijuana industry.

However, there seems to be more stoners than there are jobs for them. One worker at a Denver shelter says that about one in three of their new residents acknowledge that their main reason for being in Denver is to smoke grass.


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