Photo from Wikipedia Commons.Bill Ritter once supported needle exchange, but now he's silent on the issue.
Listen to Ritter's testimony on a 1998 bill seeking to legalize syringe exchange in Colorado.
Colorado lawmakers last tackled the legalities of syringe exchange -- the topic of this week's feature "Ahead of the Needle" -- eleven years ago, when they tried to change the state law prohibiting it. They failed. But not before Governor Bill Ritter, then Denver's district attorney, weighed in.
It's hard to understate the explosive rise of Colorado's medical marijuana industry. When Westword took an in-depth look at issue in the February 2009 article "Medical marijuana Has Become a Growth Industry in Colorado," just over 5,000 patients had been approved by the state to use marijuana -- which was legalized in the state for medicinal purposes when voters passed Amendment 20 in 2000. And, with roughly two-dozen marijuana dispensaries statewide, experts at the time were saying Colorado's
Betsy Markey doesn't like the House's healthcare bill -- and she's not that into talking about why not, either.Even though Diana DeGette has big problems with an amendment to the mammoth healthcare bill limiting access to abortions, she voted for the measure. Not so Betsy Markey, the only Democratic representative from Colorado to turn her thumb down -- and it doesn't seem to have been a last-minute decision. After all, her statement explaining her reasoning, on view below, is dated Novem
