AURORA | City lawmakers are moving forward with a measure intended to crack down on what they say are under-regulated psychoactive products and drug paraphernalia, sold in dozens of places such as Aurora vape shops, liquor stores and convenience stores.
The measure, moved Monday to the council floor for a future vote, includes a six-month moratorium on opening new vape and smoke shops in the city, giving the city more time to prepare new zoning laws.
“Really, it’s gray market area items, and it’s basically the businesses or these entities taking advantage of the lack of enforcement,” Trevor Vaughn, Aurora’s licensing manager, said.
The proposed ordinance would ban drugs like “poppers” or amyl nitrate, Amanita Muscaria a hallucinogenic mushroom, hemp weed like Delta-9 and paraphernalia that includes rose meth pipes and crack kits.
All of those drugs and items are often sold under legal or mislabeled pretenses, according to city licensing inspectors.
“These items are, in a way, illegal or age-restricted,” Vaughn said. “So we’re just trying to consolidate these codes and regulations so that we can basically handle it all on a single inspection and communication, and address this.”
One of the reasons it’s overlooked is that there appears to be a lack of community attention, in the sense that these products go unnoticed unless someone is looking for them and knows what they are, he said. So-called gas station rose meth pipes for example are sold as little fake roses in a little glass pipe or jar with a cork, though drug users use it as paraphernalia for smoking meth or crack.
“When I talk to these operators, they do know, and oftentimes they’ll either not answer or state something incorrect about the actual use of these items,” Vaughn said.
The connection between the ordinance and the moratorium is that vape and tobacco shops are notorious for selling many of these products as well.
The measure seeks a way to limit the number of vape and similar shops in the same way the city restricts liquor stores in an area. Gardner was not in favor of that measure, which is being sponsored by council members Alison Coombs and Rueben Medina.
“From my perspective, we have an issue of just not having clear enough regulations in place in our zoning codes about spacing, location and things of that nature,” Coombs said. “So we could have a block or strip mall that’s all vape and tobacco shops, and so we want to make sure that’s not what’s happening.”
Early research in four separate studies has found a correlation between tobacco vape stores and crime, which is comparable to that of liquor stores and crime, according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine. Vaughn cited one of the studies from the University of California that cited the “gray market psychoactive items and drug paraphernalia were being sold in these outlets.”
“We see a similar correlation,” Vaughn said. “We’re seeing a high concentration of these businesses in the poorer areas of town, or in areas where there are open-air drug markets, and that’s not just in Aurora. I’ve seen that elsewhere. That kind of fuels it.”
The moratorium, slated for first reading at the July 7 city council meeting, along with the drug and paraphernalia ordinance, aims to prevent new vape and smoke shops from opening for up to six months, giving the city more time to develop new policies on zoning and spacing between similar businesses.
The moratorium would not close any existing businesses that have already been licensed by the city. It would apply to businesses with 15% or more floor space dedicated to vape/smoke products, and it aims to prevent the over-concentration of these businesses in some regions of the city.
What are the drugs, and how are the “under” regulated?
Nitrous oxide is made and sold mainly for culinary purposes, like whipped cream canisters, but it has long been used as a recreational drug. Many studies, including the National Library of Medicine and the Yale School of Medicine, have shown that prolonged use causes brain cell death and other forms of brain damage.
“I’ve seen a huge increase in nitrous oxide products in stores,” Vaughn said. “It used to be just the little ‘whip-its,’ but now we’re seeing large canisters of it.”
These canisters can contain between 600 grams and 2,000 grams, whereas the average whipped cream canister only requires about 6 grams of nitrous oxide. They also come in flavors like strawberry, Vaughn said.
“It’s just exploded, and there’s no regulation in Colorado on this,” Vaughn said. “A lot of states have started taking this up, and I think you’re going to hear about it more given how much I’ve seen this grow in Colorado.”
When it comes to a drug like Kratom, an addictive stimulant “supplement,” which is legal in Colorado, the ordinance incorporates state Senate Bill 25-072, which outlines legal thresholds for Kratom products and rules around proper labeling and age restrictions.
“They didn’t assign any agency to verify that or do compliance checks,” Vaughn said. “Nor did they assign any particular agency to go to retail and check and make sure that the products are in compliance with the new state law.”
Amanita muscaria, a legal mushroom, is not permitted to be added to food ingredients. It contains a psychoactive substance called muscimol, which is different from psilocybin, which is a regulated mushroom in Colorado, Vaughn said. It’s a different psychoactive substance that’s often found to contain synthetic additives that are also psychoactive.
“These products are pretty sketchy and have some other stuff in them,” Vaughn said. “Some of these products, they’ve also been found to mislabel the other way, where they have nothing in them, but they’re trying to trick the consumer that they have something in them.”
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment food inspectors are in charge of maintaining psychoactive mushrooms being ingested, but they are limited and have no authority at the retail level. They would handle it at the distribution level, but many of the retailers have them shipped from out of state.
“I think the vape stores and some of these outlets know that, if they get it shipped in, they can dodge that,” Vaughn said. “No regulation on that, and no prevention, as far as it ends up in the hands of kids when they’re selling it that way.”
There are other products, such as Mad Honey, which is honey gathered by bees from poppy plants and is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has put out warnings that they are dangerous and highly addictive, Vaughn said.
One of the last prominent products being examined is hemp products with high THC levels. These include products such as Delta-9 and Delta-8. These are legal at some “dosages” in Colorado, but Vaughn said he found some in a local vape shop with higher doses than what the state legally allows to be sold.
“There seems to always be something new or something that they’ve added or come up with chemically,” he said.
Vaughn said the city added a rule-making process in this ordinance to try to keep up with the “gray” area drug products as they adapt and change.
“These are safety and health issues for substances that are intoxicants that are legal in our state,” Coombs said. “There’s a pretty high amount of regulation on the manufacturing, the businesses and everything else, but when there are these unregulated products, it’s dangerous. You don’t know what’s in them, and the people who are consuming them don’t know what’s in them. So I think it’s our responsibility to address those issues.”