Pubdate: Sun, 01 Nov 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Henry Alford
Column: Circa Now
Note: A monthly column by Henry Alford about modern manners and their 
complications. Henry Alford is the author of "Would It Kill You to 
Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners."

A version of this article appears in print on November 1, 2015, on 
page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Colorado 
Green Rush Is On

THE COLORADO GREEN RUSH IS ON

At the after-party for the National Cannabis Summit - an annual 
conference thick with entrepreneurs and business people, held in the 
bowels of the Sheraton in downtown Denver - eight of us attendees 
boogied alongside one of the more engaging speakers, the medical 
researcher Dr. Suzanne Sisley, who wore throughout the party a 
towering, purple velvet Mad Hatter's hat. Remembering that in her 
speech she had said, "I've never tried marijuana in any form," I 
wanted to whisper in her ear, "But your millinery tells a different story."

Outside in a cordoned-off area of a parking lot at the marijuana 
growers' supply warehouse where the party was held, hundreds of 
attendees were smoking and vaping. The conference's essential 
leitmotifs - self-promotion and schmoozing - reasserted themselves.

A man who had spent a good part of the conference selling his 
outhouse-size turbine (to help marijuana growers "get off the grid") 
was pitching it to anyone within earshot; another guest's party 
banter ran, "The five reasons to consider a pen vape are high 
quality, safety, consistency, discretion, and ... I can't remember 
the fifth reason." Then he picked up a glossy promotional card 
listing these five reasons and told me: "Oh, and purity. Purity's 
important." Dude.

At the conference, you didn't so much have a conversation as a series 
of concurrent elevator pitches. During breakfast, I sat next to a 
financial planner in her 40s, who described the purchase she was 
trying to get on the legalized marijuana industry.

"I can really help with long-term planning," she said, "so that these 
folks in the industry who are generating lots and lots of revenue 
very quickly don't just ..."

"... go out and buy one enormous bag of chocolate chip cookies?" I said.

"Yes."

Another attendee would try to excite me in his marijuana-infused 
pancake-crepe batter. (I told the gentleman, "Not to be prudish, but 
do you really want to promote weed as a breakfast food?" He said, 
"That's what I want to call it: Wake and Bake!")

But perhaps most vivid was the slick brochure that the financial 
planner handed me, its title misspelled: "Finacial Solutions for the 
Cannabis Industry." In the mad scramble known as the Green Rush, 
there is no time for proofreading.

Thar's weed in them hills! Gather around ye C.P.A.s and ye water 
filtration specialists, ye providers of insurance for growers and of 
free medical marijuana for vets, ye designers of greenhouses and tiny 
plastic containers.

If the $97 million in tax revenue that Andrew Freedman, Colorado's 
director of marijuana coordination, expects the state to earn this 
fiscal year cannot be described as a game-changer to a state whose 
all-funds budget for the fiscal year ending in June was $27 billion, 
you wouldn't know it from the resultant swirl of activity.

If you have a layover at the Denver airport, you can, for about $300, 
hire a car to take you to a dispensary and then smoke in the vehicle 
(as one website puts it: "no driving sweeeeeeet"); there are also 
meals with cannabis pairings, and cannabis-infused bubble baths.

This thing could be bigger than cellphones and cupcakes.

The two-day summit ($639, four meals; lodging not included) was rich 
with cultural dissonance. At a session called "Keep Your Customers 
High and Your Tax Low," an accountant fielded a question from a 
patrician gentleman who wore a pale blue cashmere sweater and carried 
a Metropolitan Opera tote. Using industry shorthand for a grow house, 
a place where marijuana is grown, this audience member - a potential 
investor in the industry - asked the C.P.A. a question that began, 
"Say you have two companies - one is your property management company 
and the other is your grow ... "

After another session, a woman in a navy blazer and skirt expressed 
excitement about the $11 million in sales that Oregon recorded in 
October during its first week of legalized recreational marijuana: "I 
love that number. That's such a nice first quarter."

The conference's four speeches and 31 breakout sessions covered a 
wide swath of the industry. While most sessions bore names like "Data 
Capturing and Your Business," five were devoted to Native Americans, 
who can grow and sell on their sovereign land, and three to medical marijuana.

Two common themes emerged. First, until marijuana's classification is 
changed - the Drug Enforcement Administration lists pot as a Schedule 
I drug, which means the government has deemed it to have no medical 
benefit - the industry will continue to receive a cold shoulder from 
the banking industry, and medical research will continue to be underfunded.

Second, the strides made in legalization were repeatedly likened to 
the gay rights movement. One speaker, the marijuana entrepreneur 
Christian Hageseth, imagined a day in the near future when we'll hear 
a proud parent brag "My son and his partner? They grow weed." (Applause.)

The conference's most glaring example of cultural dissonance came 
from the selection of its keynote speaker: Robert O'Neill, the leader 
of SEAL team 6 who has claimed to have shot and killed Osama bin Laden.

The intense Mr. O'Neill started his speech by saying he wasn't at the 
summit to talk about Bin Laden or the use of cannabis to treat 
veterans' post-traumatic stress disorder. He proceeded to give 
harrowing accounts of several of his more dangerous missions, 
including the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates; 
he then drew management and team-building lessons therefrom ("Stress 
is a choice," Trust your people," etc.).

I saw several people in the audience break into sobs. Others walked 
out - an Iraq vet later told me he didn't want to relive a ghastly experience.

Andrew Passen, the chief executive of MJ Conferences, the 
marijuana-specific events management company that organized the 
conference, later told me: "We really wanted to be different. A lot 
of cannabis shows don't even have a keynote speaker. We wanted 
someone to stir emotion, good, bad or indifferent."

Eager to know whether the gonzo entrepreneurial zeal exhibited by the 
summit's attendees was an accurate reflection of the pot industry as 
it already exists, I took it upon myself, during my five days in 
Denver, to go to dispensaries and express my very, very specific needs.

At the Medicine Man dispensary on my first day, I told a "budtender" 
that I wanted to feel like "Tiny wings have emerged from my nape and 
ankles." Without missing a beat, he directed me to a sativa-indica 
hybrid with the strangely governmental-sounding name G6.

Two days later, I told a Euflora dispensary budtender - a Rebel 
Wilson type with lots of tattoos - "I am in a Peter Jackson movie, 
and my tunic is made of beast." She unblinkingly recommended the 
sativa-dominant hybrid Outer Space, saying, "It'll match all that 
creativity you've already got going on, and take you even further, my 
dear." On my last day, I told a Green Cannabis budtender, 
"Cobblestones, elf dander: Sausalito." He sold me a powerful indica 
called Leeroy.

Back at the summit, I found myself in a predicament not uncommon to 
the pot tourist: There are lots of places to buy weed, but virtually 
no place to smoke it. Smoking is illegal in all public areas in 
Colorado. Outside of the parties held at the end of each day's 
sessions, the summit was a "non-consumable" event. So I savored the 
irony of potentially being arrested for smoking pot in a state where 
pot is legal.

When an attendee told me that the nearby hotel had "a patio" where 
guests could smoke, I confidently breezed into that property. There, 
in a dark open-air parking lot, I saw a sight that made me burst out 
laughing: Two grubby benches had been placed in a far, dank corner of 
the lot; each had its own slightly battered, circa 1958, 
canister-style ashtray. Patio livin'.

Back at the conference, I was on fire. "There should be an app," I 
started telling other attendees, "that tourists call to hire a car 
that will pick you up and get you high." Each car would be themed: In 
the Nurse car, the driver would be dressed in a nurse's uniform, and 
she would "medicine" you and feed you lots of Jell-O. In the Kitten 
car, the back seat has been ripped out and replaced with kittens.

Reactions ranged from "Awesome! Stoner's paradise!" to "Wouldn't the 
kittens fall out?" to "I can see you're being humorous there, Henry."

But I was delivered my strongest dose of reality when I shared the 
idea with JJ Walker, the chief executive of My 420 Tours, a company 
offering vape-friendly hotel rooms and party-bus tours of 
dispensaries, who told me: "I love that. But we're already working on 
something sort of like that." I was late to the proverbial party - 
the party that I couldn't legally party at.

On my last day in Denver, I went to Lo-Do Massage in the groovy RiNo 
arts district and got a THC-infused lotion massage. Earlier, I had 
seen the expensive lotion ($32 for two ounces) at a dispensary. I 
asked, "You mean I can get just my kneecaps high?" But the budtender 
explained that it yields Bengay-ish or arnica creamlike pain relief, 
not actual intoxication.

A wonderfully cheerful and lovely Lo-Do masseuse named Megan gave me 
a massage; when, at hour's end, she asked me how I was, I said, "I 
feel like a weightless, low-calorie iced dessert." She asked, "Not 
like Jell-O?" I said, "No. More like Tofutti or fro-yo." Megan said, "Awesome."

We shared a slightly awkward pause. I had already paid for the 
massage, and tipped Megan, so I wasn't sure what other aspect of this 
commercial transaction seemed to be hanging in the balance.

Finally, Megan spoke: "I don't want to make you talk too much more 
because I can see you're in a really good place and I don't want to ruin it."

Now that's good business.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom