AURORA | Aurora lawmakers are poised to approve an ordinance to ban and create enforcement for 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.
“We just want to make sure that we don’t have stores essentially taking advantage of loopholes in the laws to put forward into our community substances that are harmful to the people in our city,” Councilmember Alison Coombs said at Monday’s city council meeting.
The measure was approved unanimously on first reading on July 28.
“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 during a city council study session in June.
The ordinance would ban drugs like “poppers” — which is amyl nitrate — Amanita Muscaria a hallucinogenic mushroom, hemp weed like Delta-9 and paraphernalia that includes rose meth pipes, crack kits and other forms of illicit drug paraphernalia. It does not include cannabis or tobacco pipes, since the substances used in those devices are legal, Vaughn said.
Vaughn said the city also added a rule-making process in this ordinance to try to keep up with the “gray” area drug products as they adapt and change.
“There seems to always be something new or something that they’ve added or come up with chemically,” Vaughn said during a study session in June.
All of those drugs and items that were listed in the ban are often sold under legal or mislabeled pretenses, Vaughn said. For example, selling nitrous oxide with single-use balloons, but claiming it is for whipped cream when no dairy products or whipped cream canisters are sold with them.
The city will be able to use the ordinance to “deal with enforcement through one inspection.”
One of the reasons it’s been overlooked is 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.
Steel wool or copper Chore Boys, for example, are sold and used as filters for smoking crack, and the rose in a glass, often seen at the register of a gas station, can be used as a meth and crack pipe.
“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 during the study session.
Vape and tobacco shops regularly sell many of these products as well, according to city officials.
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 during the study session. “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.”
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment food inspectors are in charge of maintaining the safety of 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.
“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.”