Nebraska Cops Want Tougher Laws for Colorado Offenders

 Nebraska has consistently been on Colorado about the influx of cannabis they claim is coming through their borders since recreational legalization in January. They have already claimed that Colorado should give them some money to help with law enforcement, and asked that they patrol their borders more thoroughly. 

Now, they are asking that their own state start offering stricter punishments for those attempting to bring cannabis out of Colorado and through state borders. The Nebraska police recently lobbied at the state Senate Judiciary Committee to be able to enforce harsher laws. They want more help in the towns that border Colorado, and are angry that there is now a dispensary right on the other side of that border, claiming that it is secretly catering to those in Nebraska who want to bring their goods across state lines.

According to police, doing more searches in border towns and imposing stricter penalties will keep people from thinking it is OK to bring cannabis to Nebraska. Ryan Spohn, who works with the University of Nebraska’s Center for Justice Research, thinks this new measure would do the trick. “Individuals do not believe that they will be caught,” he said. “The severity of the punishment doesn’t matter, because they do not believe that the punishment will occur.”

However, Al Davis on the state senate expressed some concern about the new measure. “Are we ruining people’s lives who are really going to be good people down the road? I don’t think any of us want to do that,” he quoted to the Omaha World Herald. “I’d like to find a middle ground to send a message to people that Nebraska’s not a marijuana-friendly state, but not destroy somebody’s life. When I hear that people might have a felony for a marijuana brownie, I’m not sure I want to do that to anybody.” Hopefully this kind of logical thinking will prevail, and Nebraska will get out of the business of ruining lives.