Pubdate: Tue, 05 Jan 2016
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2016 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122

A REVEALING MAP OF POT FACILITIES

At first glance, the concentration of Denver's marijuana facilities 
in the city's poorer neighborhoods is startling, as shown in a 
revealing graphic appearing in The Sunday Denver Post.

As reporters David Migoya and Ricardo Baca noted, such facilities 
have sprouted in large numbers in neighborhoods such as "Elyria 
Swansea, Globeville and Northeast Park Hill in north Denver, and 
Overland to the south," as well as along the Interstate 25 and Santa 
Fe Drive corridors.

No wonder some community leaders and politicians are expressing concern.

Even so, a major factor in this concentration is that more than half 
of the marijuana licenses in Denver - 329, to be precise - are for 
growing marijuana, and cultivation is generally done in the 
industrial-type warehouses found in these districts.

There are also 85 marijuana manufacturing facilities in Denver. Not 
surprisingly, most of them have taken up residence in the same general areas.

Actual pot stores, both medical and retail, are more widely dispersed 
- - including in some neighborhoods that have few to none of the other 
facilities.

It may be the city should discourage the location of additional 
marijuana cultivation and manufacturing facilities in areas already 
populated with them, but it's hardly surprising the existing ones 
congregated where they did. It was inevitable, and it was foreseen. 
And officials can't rewrite the rules and apply them retroactively to 
existing businesses.

Not foreseen, by contrast, was the way medical pot establishments 
would continue to dominate the sales landscape two years after retail 
stores opened in 2014.

There are 133 locations in Denver with both medical and retail 
licenses, 69 medical-only stores, and a mere nine retail-only 
outlets. Obviously, many medical-pot buyers (with plenty of 
exceptions, we hasten to add) are gaming the system in order to avoid 
the higher taxes on retail marijuana.

Mayor Michael Hancock's administration has proposed freezing the 
number of medical marijuana outlets in Denver, which is wise. But the 
more difficult challenge, as the Post story makes clear, is how to 
handle potential growth in the cultivation and manufacturing sectors.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom