While addiction rates and deaths involving opioids have received the most attention in recent years, methamphetamine has made a sharp comeback in Colorado and the rest of the U.S. over the past decade.One study shows a nearly 130% increase in meth use from 2014 to...
Drug Possession
A look at crime-linked findings in the wake of pot’s legalization
Much ado about nothing? Or did a bad genie escape the bottle and wreak havoc across society?Those questions (termed a slightly different way) centrally guided research scientists teamed together in a multi-university study examining the criminal effects of marijuana...
Has legalizing pot in Colorado spawned an uptick in crime?
Individuals and groups across the country that are opposed to marijuana legalization repeatedly voice a similar refrain when they address the relaxed legal regimes operative in an ever-growing number of states.Their dire warnings about liberalized marijuana schemes...
Why a broad-based camp supports Colorado drug-possession reform
We noted in our immediately preceding Shazam Kianpour & Associates blog post that there is a viewpoint in Colorado that resists downgrading some drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.We discussed that view in our September 3 entry. In doing so, we...
Colorado drug-related debate lively, sharply divergent
Two distinct camps, two polar-opposite views.That dichotomy and stark difference of opinion is manifestly evident in discussions focused on an upcoming change in Colorado criminal law.That adjustment is both material and imminent. As noted in a recent Coloradoan...
What group comprises the primary target in criminal drug probes?
Here’s an answer hint to today’s above-posed blog headline query: It’s not the top-end principals in drug cartels or other highly placed figures of organized crime.Rather, it’s what a recent in-depth online overview of U.S. drug probes and arrests terms “small fish.”...
Early and promising feedback on federal sentencing reform law
Early reviews are in on recent federal legislation aimed at criminal sentencing reform. Although somewhat limited in scope, they seem promising.Many readers of our Denver criminal law blogs at Shazam & Associates might likely know a thing or two (or, concededly,...
Colorado enacts host of new criminal law bills
Colorado media outlets widely underscored the importance of a particular day late last month.That was May 28. One news source issued a representative comment that the month’s final Tuesday was a truly “significant day for criminal justice reform in Colorado.”That...
Denver to “deprioritize” criminal penalties re psilocybin mushrooms
A Denver advocacy group states that the health and healing benefits are so clear and long-established that “one arrest is too many for something with such low and manageable risks.”The targeted subject matter of that Decriminalize Denver utterance is what is formally...
Colorado’s LEAD program espouses a new offender strategy
We referenced a confirmed criminal sentencing failure in a recent blog post, noting in our February 25 entry “a knee-jerk policy that fails far more often than it succeeds.”That is the decades-old War on Crime strategy espousing a default lock-them-up outcome for...