Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown predicted bad things for New Year’s Day and the world’s debut of legal recreational marijuana sales, fearing a press photograph of wanton dope smoking would stream across news wires and forever tarnish Denver’s image.
While Jan. 1 will certainly spark Colorado’s suddenly retail marijuana scene, the cannabis carnival really won’t blaze until April 20. While a few stores across the state will be opening on the first of the year — the day recreational marijuana is available in stores — the perennially hazy, stoner-celebration day of 4/20 is expected to be a record-setter across Colorado.
Colorado’s ambitious experiment in cannabis policy reaches a historic milestone Wednesday, when licensed stores begin making the first legal sales of recreational marijuana anywhere in the world.
Federal marijuana prohibition in the United States started with a knock on a Denver man’s apartment door. Seventy-six years ago, a guy named Samuel Caldwell became the first person arrested and prosecuted under a federal charge of selling marijuana, after drug-enforcement agents busted him with three pounds of cannabis in his apartment at 17th and Lawrence streets.
“Follow the leader” is one way to describe how Jefferson County and some municipalities in the county are handling the state’s legalization of recreational marijuana.
When it comes to a new Colorado law that covers having marijuana in vehicles, lawyers and law enforcement officers have some advice: Don’t try to decipher it.
On Jan. 1, Colorado becomes the first place anywhere in the world to allow legal marijuana sales to anybody over 21 for any purpose.
Out-of-state tourists wandering Denver’s 16th Street Mall wondering “Can I smoke a joint here” or “Can I take this Colorado weed home with me” will find answers to those questions and others on six signs posted along the popular pedestrian thoroughfare.
“My little focus groups in Cherry Hills are having a great time,” says Edible Events organizer Jane West. “THC intensifies sensation. It makes you clearer and crisper on certain things. One friend said, ‘I keep vibrating,’ while another obsessed on the food: ‘I can taste every ingredient.’”
Marijuana users in Colorado and Washington are counting down the hours before the western US states become the first to legalize recreational pot shops on January 1.
Denver International Airport will be the first city facility to prohibit marijuana possession on all of its property as it attempts to combat illegal interstate trafficking in the face of federal law.
Colorado’s new marijuana laws could create more headaches for high school coaches and more temptations for athletes. When recreational marijuana use becomes legal Wednesday, it’s easy to see that high school athletes will be exposed to cannabis more than ever.
Colorado and Washington state are launching the world’s first legal recreational marijuana markets in 2014. Though pot has been sold for three decades at coffee shops in the Netherlands, the two states are the first to regulate and allow a full industry.
A gleaming white Apple store of weed is how Andy Williams sees his new Denver marijuana dispensary. Two floors of pot-growing rooms will have windows showing the shopping public how the mind-altering plant is grown.
The tiny Latin American country of Uruguay just leapfrogged every nation on earth, becoming the world’s first sovereign nation to legalize the cultivation, sale and use of marijuana.
It was the morning of a 2010 playoff game, and one of the Nuggets had just smoked some nuggets. As the team practiced, the player was so high that Rex Chapman, a team executive at the time, had to pull him aside to get him to focus.
The family of a New Jersey toddler who became a symbol in a push to change the state’s medical marijuana laws this year is moving.
As recreational cannabis sales begin Jan. 1, one fact is sometimes overlooked: Employers still can fire workers for using it on- or off-duty.
The Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled that a judge was correct when he ordered Colorado Springs police to return more than 60 pounds of marijuana to a cancer patient who was acquitted of drug charges.
A recent flier for a “4/20-friendly” comedy and burlesque show at Herman’s Hideaway featured marijuana-leaf logos, sponsorship from the Daily Doobie newspaper and a note that the “smokeout starts at 7:10 p.m., show at 8:30.” The promise of consequence-free pot consumption is more than a marketing tactic, show co-organizer Cameron V.
The U.S. Treasury department is expected to issue guidance in the first quarter of 2014 giving banks a “yellow light” to work with marijuana businesses, a high-ranking state official said Thursday.
GARDEN CITY — Nestled between two cities and on the edge of a bustling highway intersection, Garden City remains true to its roots as a tiny island of flowering, flourishing sin.
The Denver City Council continues to approve rules and regulations on marijuana in preparation for the Jan. 1 rollout of the recreational pot industry and on Monday will have two more votes.
When recreational-marijuana shops open on Jan. 1, Denver police officers will stand outside for crowd control but won’t be allowed to step inside to provide off-duty security from within.
Colorado’s medical-marijuana regulators have rejected business applications at an increasing rate as they near the end of a 3-year-old backlog, according to figures provided by the state.
