Adams County has received 60 applications to open a marijuana business in its unincorporated areas since it began accepting candidates Jan. 2. The county is holding an open lottery system until Jan. 22 to select 10 applicants to proceed to the state licensing process.
Founders Fund, the $2 billion San Francisco venture capital firm run by Silicon Valley stars including Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of Paypal, is investing in Privateer Holdings, a marijuana company that owns several pot-related brands, including the new Marley Natural.
A court hearing to determine the legal status of marijuana hash oil in post-legalization Colorado resulted in the judge turning up his hands and shrugging his shoulders in exasperation.
The California man arrested Monday afternoon on the Monterey Peninsula must have been dreaming of a green Christmas. Randy Lange, 57, allegedly packaged and handed out marijuana to customers and staff at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Seaside, Calif., on Monday.
It’s unlikely anyone would accuse Jefferson County commissioners of rushing when it comes to deciding a marijuana policy, but one issue could be settled soon. They are considering allowing marijuana testing facilities despite a ban on recreational sales outside of local municipalities that allow it.
The El Paso County Commission voted 3-2 to permanently ban marijuana clubs from unincorporated areas of the county. While there are no marijuana social clubs in the county’s unincorporated regions, many local advocates and businesses owners protested the board’s decision.
Two new reports show how the legalization of marijuana use and sales in states like Colorado, far from settling the nationwide debate over pot, has instead given pro- and anti-legalization sides more to fight about.
Quite possibly the world’s first public service announcement on marijuana to feature hoedown music launched on radio stations across Colorado on Monday, part of a new campaign that state health officials hope will educate — not alienate — marijuana consumers about responsible use.
This week, at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, Al Jazeera America examines “A Year on Pot,” including a day in the life of Denver Post editors and reporters on The Cannabist team. The documentary is one of a growing stash of films chronicling Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana one year ago.
An increasing number of visitors to Yellowstone National Park are being prosecuted for possessing small amounts of medical and recreational pot, which remains illegal on federal land.
Get details on a contest to get on a private party bus before seeing “Inherent Vice” with director Paul Thomas Anderson on Friday, Jan. 9, at the Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton. The movie, based on Thomas Pynchon’s novel, stars Joaquin Phoenix as drug-addled detective Doc Sportello.
Addicted to cannabis? Is that even physically possible for anyone who’s not in the cast of the 1936 propaganda movie “Reefer Madness”? Roughly 9 percent of those who use cannabis risk becoming addicted, just as about 15 percent of the people who use alcohol are at risk for becoming alcoholic.
Fewer soldiers are testing positive for marijuana in two states where recreational use of the drug is legal, an Army study of the issue obtained by The Gazette has found.
Can Colorado issue a water right to irrigate marijuana plants when federal law still says that growing pot is a crime?
Colorado has made an unusual plea to federal authorities: Let our colleges grow pot. The state attorney general’s office has asked federal health and education officials for permission for Colorado’s colleges and universities to “obtain marijuana from non-federal government sources” for research purposes.
The federal government cannot passively allow a billion-dollar marijuana industry to flourish by not prosecuting certain crimes and then later deny its participants bankruptcy protection, a new court filing says.
Nate Keller, the owner of Game Trader in downtown Brighton, said that his 16-year-old hobby and video game store would have gone under if he hadn’t begun selling vape pens and electronic cigarettes. Keller said that because of Brighton’s new ban on vaping in public, he can’t allow his customers to sample the product in the store, and it’s hard to sell a $20 bottle of vape juice if someone can’t try it out first.
The year began with one of the nation’s biggest ATM sponsors refusing to allow its machines to be in businesses with ties to the marijuana trade, and it ends with the first credit union of its kind at the precipice of opening its doors.
By virtue of a single comma, the Colorado attorney general’s office says making marijuana hash oil at home is still illegal under state law, despite other laws legalizing marijuana use, cultivation and possession.
There’s no way to put a positive spin on the latest news on marijuana use in Colorado since the passage of Amendment 64.
Police say there are people who believe that just because recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado on Jan. 1, anything goes and it’s OK to fire up a joint anywhere, anytime.
As the advent of Amendment 64 unfolded in early 2014, the impact of a business industry cornered into operating without normal banking became clear.
Two weeks ago, the Colorado Board of Health awarded grants totaling $8 million to research marijuana’s medical potential. The studies funded by these grants will help evaluate marijuana’s safety and efficacy in treating epilepsy, brain tumors, Parkinson’s disease and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The money is coming from Colorado’s medical marijuana patient fees and new taxes on recreational pot. And while a group of medical marijuana patients announced a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s funding of marijuana research, I — one of those researchers who was awarded $2 million for our PTSD study — am here to tell them why state money is needed for this kind of research in 2014-2015.
A year of legalized recreational marijuana hasn’t changed many Coloradans’ minds on the groundbreaking shift — though more than one-third say the state’s reputation has taken a hit, according to a SurveyUSA poll done for The Denver Post.
Harry Smith returns to his Colorado stomping grounds to explore “Marijuana Country: The Cannabis Boom” on CNBC, a one-hour documentary sizing up the state one year after legal sales started.
A year ago, as Colorado cities and towns were preparing for the first recreational marijuana stores to open, most were optimistic they were prepared. Still, many officials held their breath. Local government leaders from Denver to smaller cities and rural hamlets say the pivotal first-year rollout went smoothly, and in some cases it has proved quite profitable for local coffers.
As marijuana legalization took hold in Colorado, the estimated percentage of regular cannabis users in the state jumped to the second-highest level in the country, according to new federal data.
The black market for marijuana in Colorado isn’t what it used to be. Nine or 10 years ago, the narrative of illicit cannabis in the state focused on illegally grown product filtering in from Mexico, California and elsewhere. Now it seems officials and experts are more concerned about Colorado-grown marijuana infiltrating other states, a trend that is seeing a significant upward trajectory, according to data obtained by The Denver Post.
Growing illegal marijuana in rented houses across Colorado’s front range and illicitly selling it throughout the state isn’t for everyone, but it was once a way of life for Oscar, who used to grow and sell marijuana on the black market in Colorado.
Look all you want, and you’ll find nary a marijuana tourism brochure at kiosks operated by Colorado’s official travel bureaus. Yet that institutional prohibition hasn’t stopped thousands of cannabis tourists from visiting Colorado to experience the phenomenon of legal marijuana.
Mountain towns dependent on tourists are reaping the rewards of legal marijuana. As the towns swell with visitors — skiers in February and March, summer vacationers in July and August — so do their sales-tax coffers.
Edibles now account for roughly 45 percent of the legal marijuana marketplace in Colorado and led to high-profile controversies in 2014.
Delegates to national conventions in Colorado are well aware of legal retail marijuana, and not just because they might have slipped in a visit to a dispensary.
Legalizing recreational marijuana has spawned a surge of activity in some unexpected places and pumped formerly “dark” money into the larger economy.
Coloradans made it clear when they approved recreational marijuana sales that they’reOK with taxing pot and using the money for schools.
With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, it’s not surprising that the Colorado cannabis lobbying industry is growing almost as fast as the plants.
Gov. John Hickenlooper emerged as Colorado’s reluctant supervisor in the first year of legal recreational marijuana sales, tasked with administering a law he didn’t support as the state set a model for the nation. If he could have reversed the state’s legal recreational pot legalization laws, he would have, he said. But now he’s reconsidering.
Ask farmers where they procured hemp seeds to plant last spring, and you may get an answer like this one from Bill Billings: “I got them from Mother Nature and God.”
Melissa Vitale had never considered a career in marijuana when she moved her family to Colorado from Austin, Texas, a little over a year ago.
One year after retail marijuana joined medical pot as a legal product, the number of marijuana-related arrests in Denver public schools has grown by 6 percent.
Only one year in, Colorado’s unprecedented jump into marijuana legalization has become the stuff of legend. For both opponents and supporters, the state comes up repeatedly in the evolving discussion about marijuana.
Colorado seed developer Ben Holmes will soon apply for a U.S. patent on a cannabis strain. If it is awarded, the patent for Holmes’ medical-grade Otto II strain would be the first to protect a cannabis plant.
Opinion: The conservative Republican attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma recently filed a lawsuit urging the Supreme Court to invalidate marijuana legalization in neighboring Colorado. The Nebraska-Oklahoma case is based on dubious reasoning. In the unlikely event that the plaintiff states prevail, they will also have set a very dangerous precedent.
In suing to stop marijuana legalization in Colorado, two neighboring states have embarked down an arcane legal pathway that could take years to reach a conclusion, legal scholars say.
You’d think Nebraska and Oklahoma had never known an illegal pot market until Colorado changed its laws. And if Colorado’s laws have put so much stress on their criminal justice systems, why weren’t they willing to quantify it in their brief?
Despite growing public support for legalizing marijuana, a lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma shows that at least two segments of American society are prepared to fight the idea before the nation’s highest court — social conservatives and law enforcement.
In the most serious legal challenge to date against Colorado’s legalization of marijuana, two neighboring states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the history-making law. Colorado AG John Suthers said in a statement that the lawsuit is “without merit” and he will defend Colorado’s law.
A Denver man and woman face a number of charges, including child abuse, after their 3-year-old daughter tested positive for marijuana ingestion.
Medical marijuana patients are suing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment over patient fees. The Patient and Caregiver Rights Litigation Project says the health department wants to illegally use registry application fees to fund new research on medical marijuana.
Anyone interested in getting into the retail marijuana business can apply for a spot in unincorporated Adams County Jan. 2 to 22.
