The Colorado Symphony should be allowed to move forward with its "Classically Cannabis" series, says our fine arts writer. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

Opinion: The Symphony’s duet with pot should be allowed, encouraged

Does it mean the sidewalks downtown? Let’s just agree for convenience’s sake that it does. No smoking there.

Does it include your living room? Let’s agree that it does not.

But what about the Space Gallery? It is on private property, and its owner was allowing the CSO and its producer, Edible Events, to put on the show. It is a swank enclosed space, set up just for such events with a patio for smoking. Just how public is a place like that?

Somewhat, for sure. Everyone, 21 and older is invited. In a sense, that is as public as the public library.

But let’s be reasonable. It’s not the public library nor a living room. It’s somewhere in the middle, something more private, where adults go by choice, where the barrier is high — $75 high — to get in, where no one is going to wander through by accident and where art that’s not all that accessible is being presented.


Meet the woman behind Edible Events: Amy Dannemiller, a.k.a. Jane West, throws Edible Events parties — including the proposed events with the CSO


If you define private as “exclusive,” than “Classically Cannabis” is surely that.

A city has leeway in these matters, discretion, and the Hancock administration has made clear where it stands. It is taking a careful approach, defining “public” technically, broadly, when it could just as easily define it by the spirit of voters’ intentions.

If marijuana is legal, then we are going to have to figure out how to use it. Should it be something we cloister in our homes, like sex. Or something we work to enjoy as a community, like alcohol?

What did the voters intend? Who knows … yet? We will have to experiment with the things people come up with until we find something we can all agree upon.

It’s funny in a way that the symphony, one of the oldest, most established and socially conservative organizations in the city, is on the forefront of establishing just what that something might look like. Who would have predicted — or thought that the symphony’s core audience wouldn’t really mind that the organization was leading the charge, intentionally or not.

In light of all that, it is funnier, perhaps, that the city does. The same city that operates Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the pot-smoking-est venue on the Front Range.

People use marijuana routinely there, and no one gets busted. It’s an age-old tradition, in as public a place as you can find.

Of course, Denver makes millions each year off the rock concerts that come through Red Rocks. Is it fair for the city to allow pot when it profits — but get in the way when a nonprofit wants to profit?

There are a lot of questions to answer, work to do and it’s our job to do it. History has made us, here and now, like it or not, the stewards of the great marijuana experiment. We’re going to have to work it out together, to refine laws and big concepts — like the definition of “public” — and deem what is socially acceptable.

What the symphony was offering seems a reasonable way to honor that historical charge. All of the pieces were in place for a controlled, communal exploration. Why not let the Mozart play and reel in the limits if public safety or propriety are being threatened? Why not consider “public” innocent until proven guilty, instead of the other way around?

The city has an obligation to keep the order, and maybe some officials think these concerts can’t go on because something bad might happen. Maybe they had to act.

But they also have to lead boldly, in ways that respect the public’s wishes, in ways that reflect the progressive attitudes of a progressive city? These are social issues, election issues, identity issues.

No one wants marijuana use to be rampant, to bring neighborhoods down or harm children. But we have to rise to the occasion here, be the scientists, the explorers, the founding fathers of this new cannabis world. And maybe this is the place to proceed.