Pubdate: Mon, 09 Feb 2015
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2015 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Barbara Brotman

POT EMPORIUM OPENS FORMER STONER'S ONCE-BLOODSHOT EYES

The prospect of medical marijuana for sale in your Illinois 
neighborhood may seem unreal.

But for a truly mind-blowing experience, even without trying the 
wares, consider a glimpse at the next step on the legalization 
continuum: its sale for recreational use.

The recreational use of pot became legal in Colorado in 2014. Which 
means that a ski vacation there now offers an additional kind of adventure.

On our recent ski trip to Telluride with friends, my adult daughter 
proposed that we take a look. Not necessarily a taste; her drug of 
choice is a gin martini. But why waste an opportunity, she asked, to 
see a legal marijuana store?

And so we found ourselves walking up to the second floor of a quiet 
commercial building and into Alpine Wellness, a medical and 
recreational marijuana center.

We showed our IDs - customers must be 21 or older - and were shown 
into the retail store. I gaped. Shelves of marijuana-infused cookies 
and candies, jars of marijuana buds, packs of lozenges called Chill 
Pills - there was a cornucopia of marijuana products, all on display 
in glass cases and labeled with price and THC content.

There was Ganjala, Alpine Wellness' signature flavored caramels, 
named after the Telluride gondola and available in flavors like black 
cherry, orange and strawberry lemonade. Each package - single-serving 
and childproof, as required by law - contains 10 mg of active THC, 
the recommended single dosage, and costs $3.

There were Terrapin Turtle Bites - chocolate-covered caramels with 
pecans. There were peanut butter chocolate chip cookies; oatmeal, nut 
and raisin cookies; gluten-free apricot almond cookies.

There were rows of glass jars of bud, emitting the sweet scent of my 
high school bedroom and bearing names like Jabberwocky (32.07 percent 
THC) and Pineapple Skunk (23.33 percent THC). The prices were posted 
on the wall: a quarter of an ounce was $90; a 1-gram joint was $10. 
Tax was included.

Cheerfully explaining to his Chicago-area visitors the difference 
between the indica and sativa varieties was Chicago-area native 
Michael Grady, 29, co-owner of Alpine Wellness. Grady is a snowboard 
technician turned ganjapreneur.

"Indica is more relaxing; sativa is more stimulating; and hybrid is a 
balance of the two," said Grady, who before moving to Telluride was 
an EMT in the emergency room of Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital.

He showed off the new line of KOTO cookies - the company donates 10 
percent of the proceeds to Telluride's community radio station, KOTO 
- - and the also-new chocolate-covered Peppermint Fatties.

He talked about the business of marijuana, the manufacturing process, 
the importance of vertical integration. Alpine Wellness built and 
operates a grow facility and a commercial kitchen, sells its Ganjala 
in 20 shops around Colorado and employs 20 people full time.

It also pays the state about $20,000 a month in sales and excise tax 
revenue, Grady said, and about $15,000 a year for state licensing.

Over at the counter, a middle-aged man was mulling his order.

"I'll try the blue raspberry (Ganjala)," he told Sarah Schwab, a bud 
tender who also handles sales, "and whatever else you think is delicious."

It was all so matter-of-fact, so open, so - legal. We might have been 
tasting cabernet sauvignon instead of sniffing OG Kush.

My baby boomer mind reeled. Baby boomer minds tend to do that at first.

"The baby boomers, they're the ones that are most excited," Grady said.

"I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said, 'I can't believe 
this happened in my lifetime,' " Schwab said. The young staffers 
delight in their midlife customers and their old-school references to 
"smoking a number."

Still, one 48-year-old Colorado man confessed to mixed feelings about 
legal marijuana stores. "As much as I like it, you don't want to see 
them springing up everywhere," he said. "Not to be a hypocrite, but 
you don't want to see a liquor store on every corner either."

On the other hand, a 62-year-old Florida businessman here on a ski 
trip had no ambivalence. He said he hopes other states legalize 
recreational use too. If Florida does, he mused, "It would be nice to 
have a (marijuana) store in retirement."

Legal marijuana doesn't look like this everywhere, said Art 
Goodtimes, an aptly named San Miguel County commissioner I called to 
ask about other stores. Goodtimes supported the ballot initiative 
decriminalizing cannabis and was Alpine Wellness' first customer when 
it opened for recreational marijuana sales Jan. 1, 2014.

Some Colorado towns outlawed the sale of marijuana within their 
borders, he said. Some stores in larger cities in eastern Colorado 
have armed guards and considerably less relaxed atmospheres.

But in Telluride, which hosts an annual mushroom festival, "it's just 
normal," he said.

Which, after the initial shock, was how it looked to me. Yes, it 
looked unbelievable at first glance. But gay marriage once looked 
unbelievable too. And if I can buy a glass of pinot grigio without 
fear of arrest or violence, why shouldn't people be able to buy a bud 
of OG Pure?

And how was the Ganjala, anyway? Alas, legal marijuana is wasted, so 
to speak, on me. My youthful stoner self would weep to hear it, but 
weed now makes me paranoid.

I was tempted to buy some anyway on principle, if only to see whether 
I could get away with putting a gram of Pineapple Skunk on my Tribune 
expense account. But in the end, I left Alpine Wellness empty-handed.

Several of my ski buddies, however, assured me that the store's 
product was primo.

A glimpse of legal, tax-revenue producing marijuana wasn't bad either.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom