Reader: Marijuana Isn’t the Real Problem in Colorado Springs

Have marijuana grows replaced meth houses as a scourge in Colorado communities? That’s the view of Detective M. Adam Hughes, who says he hasn’t found a meth lab inside a house in over three years during his work with the Colorado Springs Police Department. Instead, he now gets complaints about large-scale marijuana grows inside neighborhood homes. But some readers don’t think that’s the big problem in Colorado Springs. Says Scott: 

The real issue in the Springs is how maryjuana is turning good Christian children away from Sunday School and onto evils such as women’s marches, gluten-free breads, and gay weddings. 

Notes Leon: 

That’s what an eighty-plus-year-old Prohibitionist law and rampant lies from said Prohibitionists cause. Total IGNORANCE. Marijuana in no way shape or form should ever be compared to meth.

Concludes Brent: 

They just want to destroy all of Med and go all Rec, so they can make more money off a harmless plant.

Hughes called residential marijuana grows the “new meth houses” at a public presentation for members of the real estate industry on January 18. According to Hughes, the two largest drug issues facing Colorado are the opiate epidemic and illegal marijuana operations, with many of those operations sending pot to other states, he said.

But others on the program disagreed as to how widespread the growhouse problem might be not just in Colorado Springs, but in other major metro areas.

“I think I’ve only seen one [house] that might have been a grow house,” responded Greg Eckler, owner of Denver Realty Experts, a local real estate agency and data analysis firm. “I don’t think it’s this widespread problem.”

What do you think of Colorado Springs? Would you compare growhouses to meth houses? Post a comment or email marijuana@westword.com.