All,

As many of you already have heard, the Senate Appropriations committee killed the Flavor Ban proposal  on a 5-2 Vote.  Senator Zenzinger and Senator Rodriguez ultimately joined Senators Sonnenberg, Rankin and Cooke to vote no.  Senator Gonzales and Senator Hansen (who is a Denver Mayoral Candidate) sided with the behavioral control advocates over our store owners, employees and the rights of adult customers to use federally legal products.

Importantly …. thank you. The amount of effort that went into this was astounding and it takes a team effort to fight against a Bloomberg funded advocacy groups.  The Work of all channels of the industry was exceptional and importantly the outcome where the bill was actually voted down in committee, send s a strong message across the country in multiple states where this battle is being fought.  Colorado is Blue state where democrats control all levers of government. 

This last weekend Over 140 people signed up to testify in opposition to the bill – with three days left it put an enormous amount of pressure on the Calendar which helped tremendously.   I want to thank you all for your help and engagement.

Importantly, we have to do a better job of controlling this conversation next session – By starting now we can head off local efforts as well as put markers down regardless of the outcome of the election.  That said, for our particular industry and this issue, split chambers would go a long way in helping forestall these types of fights in the future.  President Fenberg’ and Speaker Garnett, along with Senator Hobert, and Representative McKean all helped us a lot.  However Senator Holbert and the Speaker are both term limited.

A lot of the press is going to say that the Governor wanted this bill dead, and that’s true, but what’s also true is that it would have been very easy to simply rely on the governor’s veto.  But fighting so strongly for our position, we sent a really strong message and I think the  extent of this fight will be remembered for multiple sessions.  Its going to be important to support the people and help shape the narrative for next session.

Together we were able to save hundreds of millions in sales that are important to support employees and our communities.  Please keep up the good work on Compliance statistics.

Respectfully,

Grier W. Bailey
Executive Director
CWPMA
Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association

Colorado Convenience Store Association