a public member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Political activities Colorado House of Representatives In 1964 he was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives as a Democrat from Denver. In 1967, he drafted and succeeded in passing the nation's first liberalized abortion law. He was an early leader of the environmental movement, and was President of the First National Conference on Population and the Environment. In 1972, as a member of the Colorado General Assembly, Lamm led the movement against Denver's hosting of the 1976 Winter Olympics. Group was named Citizens for Colorado's Future (CCF). Denver had already been awarded the games, but the movement succeeded in cutting off public funding for the games, forcing the city to cancel its hosting. Innsbruck, Austria then replaced Denver as the host. Lamm's successful effort made him known statewide. Colorado governor Lamm ran for Governor of Colorado in 1974 on a platform to limit growth, and was elected. Reacting to the high cost of campaigning, he had walked the state in his campaign. One of his acts as governor was designating musician John Denver as the Poet Laureate of Colorado. As candidate and then governor, Lamm promised for environmental reasons to "drive a silver stake" through plans to build Interstate 470, a proposed circumferential highway around the southwest part of the Denver Metropolitan Area. However, continued development in the area led to increased congestion on surface streets, and the highway was later built, largely with state funds, as State Highway 470. In 1984, his outspoken statements in support of physician-assisted suicide generated controversy, specifically over his use of the phrase "we have a duty to die." Lamm later explained that he "was essentially raising a general statement about the human condition, not beating up on the elderly," and that the exact phrasing in the speech was "We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life." His dire predictions for the future of social security and health care ("duty to die") earned him the nickname "Governor Gloom". His views were satirized by noted folk singer Tom Paxton in January 1985. Lamm was elected Colorado governor three times. When he left office in 1987 after three terms and twelve years in the office, he