Outside the Springs

In the last several years, the nation has debated the use of public restrooms by transgender people. Some argue that transgender people should be allowed to use the restroom that correlates with the gender they identify as. Others feel that people should be required to only use the restrooms that are assigned to the gender they were born with.

The internet, for all its benefits, also gives criminals and predators an easy way to reach young people for sextortion.

Over the last several years, gun rights and the preservation of the Second Amendment are issues that are frequently in the spotlight. With the uptick of mass shootings in the country, every time a tragedy involving firearms occurs anti-gun organizations and lawmakers push for more gun regulations.

When short-term rental websites like Airbnb and VRBO launched, many started off small with individuals renting out rooms or portions of their homes. Now, the short-term rental craze has reached new levels and many entrepreneurs are getting into the industry across the country offering entire homes to be rented to travelers.

Fewer students are attending public schools in Colorado. The state's combined public elementary, middle and high school enrollment has dropped by 0.5% from Oct. 2020. The fall of that year was the time of full-blast pandemic shutdowns, which included many schools. Middle school enrollment has dropped by 2.21% from 2020.

One of the main issues Ganahl focused on was the drug problem, specifically the fact that Colorado has the highest cocaine use rate out of all the other states in the country. In fact, the statistic was used in several campaign ads for Ganahl including billboards across the state and television and radio commercials.

In American entertainment, people who dwell in rural parts of the country's interior are generally caricatured as narrow-minded, incurious, hostile to outsiders and often dangerous. In entertainment, there has been a surge and reinvention of the true crime genre in the last decade.

Colorado became the first state in the U.S. to legalize recreational sales of marijuana starting in 2014 and residents were shocked about how well it kicked off at first. Being one of two states (Washington legalized recreational marijuana the same year) where people could legally buy the drug without having medical reasons, the marijuana industry boomed right away.

Everyone is accustomed to hearing the terms El Nino and La Nina and how they relate to weather activity. But even though most are familiar with the terms, some are confused as to what the weather-related phrases exactly mean and how the occurrences can change weather patterns.

Once the shutdowns created by the pandemic were over, many thought that business would go back to usual. But after the pandemic the nation saw what many described as the Great Resignation. And through 2022, the labor shortage did not improve as much as many expected.