PERRY: Commercial pot smoke gets in their ayes here in Aurora

Hold on, Aurora, don’t get your bongs in a bother.

A few city lawmakers sent up ominous smoke signals this week from a committee meeting, hinting that Aurora should ban pot shops for a year and see what happens when the state makes it legal to start selling mary jane in July.

You know, even after all these months since Colorado voters insistently approved Amendment 64, ending marijuana prohibition in the state, I can’t believe this is really happening. Clearly, that same feeling pervades Aurora’s city council.

City council critics are now stoning nervous or defiant Aurora lawmakers with demands that they realize just how drastically the times, they have a-changed. Anyone who stands bewildered in one place too long is being clobbered with the fact that Colorado voters want to let folks get high and pay taxes to do it.

I have to admit, I was among those who thought this was a great idea, but in the back of my mind, when it came to seeing Aurora as the world’s next Amsterdam, all I could think of is, “yeah, right.” It’ll never really happen.

Much faster than I could even grasp, Aurora was dismissing marijuana possession cases, the state was putting together marijuana regulation committees and the feds were signaling that they might actually just look the other way as Colorado and Washington found its way out of the weeds on this. If you didn’t catch the story we ran this week, a bi-partisan group of congressmen are sponsoring federal legislation that allows Colorado and Washington to pull this marijuana thing off without causing seizures among oh-so-seriously unhappy folks at the DEA.

I get it now. Despite any doubts or misgivings on my part or those of the Aurora City Council, we are about to make pot legal, plentiful and taxable.

So why wait? Medical marijuana shops have pretty much blazed the smoky trail of commercial weed. Amendment 64, by design, made it clear that commercial pot regulation and use was to be handled much in the same way as liquor stores. There are millions of dollars in desperately needed tax revenue at stake here. Aurora has a very large, very talented and very savvy zoning, business, legal and regulation staff. The city has it’s own liquor licensing board, staff and authority.

If it sounds like Aurora has a lot more reasons than not to forge ahead and figure out this perplexing business and public safety issue, you’re right. If it sounds like Aurora lawmakers are either skittish or unhappy about permitting marijuana stores and growers to light up cash registers here, you’re right.

I can relate. It’s no secret that I am a big fan of increasing gun controls. Although I don’t fear guns and I’m OK with people hunting for fun and food, I’d be deliriously happy if every gun maker, gun shop and firing range in Colorado folded its tent and moved to places I would never want to go. But that’s just stupid. Guns are legal here. The people have spoken. Like it or not, I’ve got to live with that.

And where have you heard that before? Why, it’s members of your own city council, some who have been very vocal in pointing out that they are happy to stand behind a controversial, polarizing and potentially dangerous industry like the firearms business, because, like it or not, it’s a legal business, creates good jobs and provides tax money to the city’s coffers. Even those city lawmakers who really like what the NRA says and does would agree that firing ranges and gun shops don’t belong everywhere in the city, and there must be some rules.

Yeah, you get it.

So now is the time for the city to get it and figure out the rules. While some of those demanding that Aurora forge ahead might be high, I am not. Lawmakers need to hold off any decision until they see what state lawmakers do by early next month. It would be prudent to put Aurora pot shops on hiatus for a few months as the city develops a working plan. But an arbitrary, one-year ban on pot shops only invites an ill-conceived citizen initiative to make the ballot this fall, forcing the city’s hand.

City lawmakers need to take deep breath, hold it, and move ahead with this issue like they do most others, quickly and efficiently.

Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com