Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Friday that if it were up to him, the recreational use of marijuana would not be legal in his state, and the "jury's still out" regarding the law's success.
"If I could've waved a wand the day after the election, I would've reversed the election, and said 'this was a bad idea,'" the Colorado Democrat said during an interview on
CNBC's "Squawk Box" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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One one of the main problems, Hickenlooper explained, is that "we don't know what the unintended consequences are — can we keep it out of the hands of kids?
"All the top neuroscientists say this high-THC marijuana can diminish long-term memory in teenagers," he explained.
Colorado began selling recreational pot on Jan. 1, 2014, after the voters in the Centennial State supported it 55 percent to 45 percent in November 2012.
"I voted against it. I opposed it as publicly as possible," Hickenlooper said. "You don't want to be the first person to do something like this."
One of the biggest challenges, he said, is figuring out how to regulate it.
"There's a whole regulatory environment run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that really regulates alcohol," he explained. "We're starting from scratch, and we don't have a federal partner because it's still illegal federally."
However, Hickenlooper said that "we spent a year creating just the foundation framework of regulation, and then, over the last year . . . it became legal . . . and we learned all the places we had more work to do."
"We thought it would be very tough [to implement], and it's been very tough," he added, but "we've made real progress."
However, he says that "the jury's still out."
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