Dear Stoner: I'm thinking about quitting smoking flower. I'll probably eat edibles, but I want my lungs to stay healthy. Will they heal themselves if I quit? J.R. Huff 'n' Stuff Dear J.R.: Good for you, man. As much as I love consuming cannabis and all that it does, there's no way around the effects of smoke on lungs after years of use, so I commend you for even considering the idea. According to the American Lung Association, the dangers of marijuana smoke include chronic cough, phlegm production, wheezing and acute bronchitis. The first three are likely to gradually disappear in the weeks, months and years after you quit smoking, but if you get chronic bronchitis or emphysema, then you're stuck for life. If your lungs and the air sacs in them aren't completely forsaken, though, they could slowly regenerate and eventually filter out all of the tar - so don't be surprised if you continue to cough for a little after quitting. [continues 264 words]
Recently in The Pueblo Chieftain I read a group of medical professionals united to sign a document in favor of the current (misguided) petition in favor of outlawing marijuana establishments, etc.; within Pueblo County. Currently, another voter issue would allow wine, full-strength beers and even spirits in grocery stores. I see none of the righteous indignation of these groups over the alcohol issue. The hypocrisy is astonishing, ROTFLOL (Rolling on the floor laughing out loud). Alcohol is much worse than marijuana. But marijuana is so much more emotional than alcohol. [continues 189 words]
I am writing in response to a recent article published on May 3 titled, "At the State Capitol: Marijuana bill headed to the governor." I understand this is a sensitive subject with many pros and cons; however, I feel that HB 1373 is a solid start to allowing children with various diseases or disorders to get there medical marijuana (nonsmokeable) medicine administered in school by a parent or guardian. I realize this bill may come under some scrutiny from other student's parents and or teachers due to the risk of having marijuana on the premises, thus giving the impression that drugs are allowed at school. I feel that school staff and parents may communicate regularly that these adults will control this policy with sternness and follow the rules set forth by the government. [continues 60 words]
Heroin use is such a huge issue in our country; it seems to be the drug of choice for most people in today's world. In Pueblo alone, we had seven deaths as a result of overdoses on heroin in 2014; in 2015, we had nine deaths on top of the 13 homicides in our city. When will we see that we cannot treat addicts like hardened criminals? Addiction should be treated like a disease. Our main focus should be the rehabilitation of people who have been led astray. When someone is rehabilitated, they can take back their life, everything the drug has taken away. We have all seen how addiction tears families apart. Everyone hurts when someone they love abuses drugs. [continues 129 words]
Steamboat Springs - Armed with a stack of photos, research, statistics and zoning maps, the operators of a local marijuana business on Tuesday will try to convince at least one more Steamboat Springs City Council member to let them move into a more visible spot between a restaurant and a liquor store. The hearing on Natural Choice's proposal to move to Curve Plaza in west Steamboat is a do-over for council. Whatever the council decides is poised to be controversial. [continues 549 words]
The fines levied against marijuana businesses through the county's enforcement division are helping homeless people who have become stranded in Pueblo. In an effort to help homeless get back to their places of origin, the Pueblo County commissioners voted Wednesday to give the Pueblo Area Law Enforcement Chaplains Corp. a $25,000 grant that would be used to help benefit homeless individuals without support in Pueblo County. Commissioner Sal Pace said the money for the grant comes from funding that the county has set aside from marijuana fine money to address homelessness and youth drug prevention. [continues 480 words]
Home groan Clint and Rebecca Lockwood rushed to City Hall when they heard Colorado Springs City Council was about to limit home grows to 12 plants, but Council had already adopted the ordinance. So they went home worried sick about their son, Calvin, who's severely autistic and relies on homemade CBD oil to keep his aggression under control. Without it, their home is hell. The Lockwoods say that, unmedicated, Calvin won't sleep, sweats, shakes, eats furniture, attacks his younger brother and bashes his head into the wall until he bleeds. [continues 800 words]
Colorado pot smokers are helping send 25 students to college, the first scholarships in the U.S. funded with taxes on legal marijuana. The awards offered by Pueblo County, in southern Colorado, are the latest windfall from legal Colorado marijuana sales that are also helping build schools and aid the homeless - and in one county, providing 8% raises to municipal workers. Pueblo County is granting $1,000 each to the students; recipients will be announced later this month. "It's incredible," said Beverly Duran, the executive director of the Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation, which is overseeing the scholarships. "Every year we get a nice pool of students ... but we can always only award to a small percentage. This for us expands that to extraordinary lengths." [continues 221 words]
John Hickenlooper, Once a Leading Critic, Now Says the Industry Looks 'Like It Might Work.' Here's Why. DENVER - When Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana four years ago, one of the move's chief critics was Gov. John Hickenlooper. The moderate Democrat said that if he could "wave a magic wand" to reverse the decision, he would. Then he called voters "reckless" for approving it in the first place, a remark he later downgraded to "risky." "Colorado is known for many great things," Hickenlooper said. "Marijuana should not be one of them." [continues 636 words]
State's High- Grade Marijuana Is in Big Demand on Black Market DENVER - If you can dream up a way to smuggle marijuana out of Colorado, chances are someone else has already tried it: Cars and trucks. Potato chip bags and jars of peanut butter. The U. S. mail. Not even the sky is the limit: A pilot last year confessed he used his skydiving planes to deliver nearly a ton of pot to buyers in Texas and Minnesota, court records show. [continues 787 words]
Colorado's top prosecutors and police officials want a two-year moratorium on new marijuana laws to give officers time to catch up. In a letter dated last week and sent to lawmakers, leaders of the state's three main groups of law enforcement officials said local police "cannot keep up with the quantity and speed of constantly changing marijuana law." There have been 81 marijuana-related bills introduced in the Colorado legislature in just the past four years, according to the letter. [continues 145 words]
A school district board in El Paso County approved Thursday a policy to allow therapeutic marijuana products at its schools. The District 49 Board of Education, in Peyton, unanimously, in a five-to-zero vote, approved the "Compassionate Administration of Therapeutic Cannabinoid Products on District Property" policy, the district announced in a media release. The policy, known as "Jaxs' policy," was approved as part of a regularly scheduled monthly meeting and is the first of its kind in the state, according to the district. [continues 286 words]
The three sons of a woman shot to death in 2014 have filed what appears to be the country's first wrongful-death lawsuit against the recreational marijuana industry. The lawsuit claims that the company that made the marijuana edible and the store that sold the candy to Richard Kirk recklessly and purposefully failed to warn him about the bite-sized candy's potency and possible side effects - including hallucinations and other psychotic behaviors. Hours after Kirk purchased the marijuana candy April 14, 2014, Kristine Kirk, 44, called 911 terrified of her husband, who was ranting about the end of the world and jumping in and out of windows. All three of the couple's young sons heard the gunshot that killed their mother. Their youngest son, who was 7 at the time, watched his mother die, according to an amended complaint filed Monday night. [continues 1068 words]
In the first three months of 2016, Colorado pot shops sold more than $270 million of cannabis and related products, according to new figures from the state Department of Revenue. The state's latest data show that its marijuana shops sold nearly $90 million of cannabis in March. The licensed stores sold more than $55 million of recreational marijuana and more than $33 million of medical cannabis in March, the latest month for which the department has released tax data for the industry. Totals for retail and medical marijuana dipped slightly in March after a bustling February, which was the state's fifth-most-lucrative month for sales since they began in January 2014, according to the Cannabist's calculations and state data. [continues 222 words]
In the week leading up to the end of the Second Regular Session of the State Legislature, two major pieces of marijuana legislation met their fates. In the first week of May, a proposal to certify organic marijuana at the state level was rejected in a Senate committee by a vote of 4-3, while Jack's Law, a bill requiring Colorado schools to accommodate the use of non-smokeable medical marijuana by students, passed both the House and Senate. These bills are small, but significant pieces of legislation. They were necessitated by conflicts between state and federal laws concerning the rights of cannabis patients and consumers. [continues 571 words]
Dear Stoner: I have a metal pipe that I can unscrew and clean, and the other day I had a great idea: What if I put a nug in there to get nice and sticky after smoking a few bowls? Will it be more potent? JustBlaze Dear Blaze: Now I know why natives get so annoyed with transplants, because no one who grew up here would ever think of doing such a stupid thing. No offense. Yes, sticking a nug in a pipe while you smoke can be a jailhouse way of coaxing it to get you a little higher, but it comes at the cost of your tastebuds, lungs and brain cells. That black stuff that covers the inside of your pipe is basically tar with some THC in it. Smoking it gets you high, but it's not worth the damage it does to your lungs or brain cells while you're coughing for five minutes - and it tastes like Bigfoot's dick. [continues 324 words]
"The moratorium will not be extended" reads a line in the ordinance that the Colorado Springs City Council passed in late November, establishing a six-month moratorium on marijuana business licensing. Now, with that moratorium due to expire on May 25, Council is considering putting a new one in place - this time for a full year. "I hear what you're saying, 'It's not an extension; it's a whole new ordinance.' I got you," Speakeasy Vape Lounge owner and City Council hopeful Jaymen Johnson said to Council at its April 26 meeting. "It seems you guys have figured out the loophole thing just as well as the clubs did, so congratulations. Glad we could show you how it's done." [continues 804 words]
We are presenting this information in regard to the recent article that stated "Pueblo relies on our industry." Toward the end of the article, Dr. Richard Rivera stated, "Nothing shows that cannabis is a gateway drug." Most importantly, Dr. Rivera stated the following, "I believe from a health point of view, there are no health issues connected to cannabis use whatsoever." As health professionals concerned about the people of Pueblo, it is our responsibility to fully educate on risks associated with all drugs and in this case, marijuana. Is marijuana a gateway drug? A national study conducted by Robert Secades-Villa and his colleagues and published in the International Journal of Drug Policy revealed 44.7 percent of individuals with lifetime cannabis use progressed to other illicit drug use. [continues 287 words]
I find it interesting that Posada and some other nonprofits continue to try and connect homelessness with the cannabis industry. It's not far-fetched to see that Posada and these other nonprofits are the enablers of homelessness. You can go to Posada on any given day and Ann Stateleman will give you a handout. If that doesn't work go see Rose Mertz at the Salvation Army for a handout, but if your still unsuccessful, then try Care and Share, the Soup Kitchen, Wayside Mission, commodities,social services and the list goes on. [continues 220 words]
Ten people control nearly 20 percent of the 1,046 marijuana business licenses in Denver, and those owners have built their empires largely through acquisitions of smaller operations. With new industry caps on grow-facility and store locations in Denver, consolidation by the big players is likely to intensify. Some independent owners say tax and regulatory burdens make it difficult for smaller pot businesses to survive. Vail's largest commercial developer. An owner of a car-detail shop. A former nonprofit event planner. A businessman who made a fortune in child car seats. A one-time Subway franchisee bankrupted by real estate losses. [continues 1165 words]
I am, unfortunately, glad to see all the coverage of the heroin epidemic in The Pueblo Chieftain and on Channels 5 and 13. We do need to keep this front and center. I do have a few minor corrections to the story in Sunday's (May 1's) paper. I am a retired ER doctor, not an addiction specialist. And, I think Access Point Pueblo is serving well under half of the people who inject drugs in Pueblo. I base this on conversations I have every week with people who are accessing the exchange and who tell me they know a lot of people who still cannot bring themselves to take a chance on us and who tell us they are obtaining syringes for a lot of others who are afraid to come. And those are just the needle users. [continues 248 words]
I read with some dismay that the Legislature and a list of honorable patrons are going to spend $900,000 of taxpayer dollars for cannabis research at Colorado State University-Pueblo. And The Pueblo Chieftain is so pleased. How about that money going to the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office to offset the costs of all the pot busts that are going on in Pueblo West and the county. Why doesn't the Chieftain go to CSU-Pueblo on a Saturday night and do its own study (free)? [continues 86 words]
Dear Stoner: Why doesn't Colorado have Amsterdam-style cafes? I remember reading about pot clubs trying to come to Denver. Cole Dear Cole: Colorado doesn't have cafes like the cannabis coffee shops in Amsterdam because of this state's stance on public consumption. Although it's legal to smoke pot in private areas in Colorado, public spots and businesses are still off limits. And while technically it's also illegal to consume marijuana in public in Amsterdam, Dutch law enforcement looks the other way when it comes to designated coffee shops. Sadly, our local cops aren't as cool: There are a few pot clubs in the Denver metro area that operate as private establishments and only allow members in to consume, but they still face regular harassment by law enforcement and other officials. Rigs 4 Us, a Denver smoke shop located in a private residence, was shut down on 4/20 when it tried to give out free dabs, and multiple pot clubs in Denver were shut down in 2015. [continues 282 words]
Sued in Pueblo A Pueblo resident is suing to roll back a ballot initiative that's trying to roll back retail pot in the county. That initiative, pushed by a group called Citizens for a Healthy Pueblo, is unconstitutional according to the complaint filed this week in district court asking for injunctive relief. Local attorney Dan Oldenburg and tree-services company owner Kenny Gierhart filed for a petition on April 8. Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert "Bo" Ortiz certified it a few days later, saying they'd need signatures from 5 percent of registered county voters to make it onto the ballot. The question asks voters if they want to ban retail marijuana facilities, including cultivation, infused-product manufacturing, testing and stores. [continues 671 words]
The Industry Is Intensifying Its Battle Against Pesticide Rules. The Colorado marijuana industry is stepping up its fight against the state's efforts to regulate the application of pesticides on cannabis. After passing in the state House, a bill that would have codified Gov. John Hickenlooper's November executive order - telling state agencies that any marijuana grown with unapproved pesticides is a threat to public safety and should be removed from commerce and destroyed-died in a state Senate committee last week. [continues 632 words]
Pueblo Hospitals Have Joined a Petition Drive to Stop Recreational Marijuana Sales. Dr. Steven Simerville worries about the number of babies being born in Pueblo with marijuana in their bodies. The medical director of the newborn intensive care unit at St. Mary- Corwin Medical Center finds that mothers who abhor smoking cigarettes during pregnancy see no harm in smoking a joint. "What I'm seeing in our nursery is a dramatic increase in babies who test positive for marijuana," he said. "The interesting thing for me is the number of mothers who use marijuana and want to breast feed. They don't believe marijuana is harmful." [continues 560 words]
County Ran into City Pushback on Authority to Levy on a Single Product Adams County's voter-sanctioned special tax on recreational marijuana sales, which went into effect last summer, was no easy thing. Three cities - Northglenn, Aurora and Commerce City - sued the county, claiming that it didn't have the authority under state law to levy a tax on a single product. Coupled with their own municipal taxes on pot, they argued that an additional county levy would put retail pot stores in their jurisdictions at a competitive disadvantage to others. [continues 304 words]
Fourth Corner Forges on in Bid to Be State's First Credit Union for Pot The Fourth Corner Credit Union on Friday appealed a lower court's ruling that denied its bid to become the first Colorado credit union for the marijuana industry. U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson in January dismissed Fourth Corner's suit seeking a master account with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Jackson said granting access to the Federal Reserve's network would "facilitate criminal activity" because marijuana remains illegal under federal law. [continues 447 words]
Congress and President Obama are under pressure to reschedule marijuana. While rescheduling makes sense, it wouldn't fix the broken scheduling system. Ideally, marijuana reform should be part of a broader bill rewriting the Controlled Substances Act. The Controlled Substances Act created a five-category scheduling system for most legal and illegal drugs (although alcohol and tobacco were notably omitted). Depending on what category a drug is in, the drug is either subject to varying degrees of regulation and control (Schedules II through V) - or completely prohibited (Schedule I). The scheduling of various drugs was decided largely by Congress and absent a scientific process - with some strange results. [continues 376 words]
The Legislation Lets Visitors to the State Buy As Much As Residents. Colorado's tourists would be able to buy as much marijuana as residents if a bill moving through the legislature passes. The measure repeals Colorado's unique-in-the-nation tiered purchasing system for marijuana. All adults over 21 are allowed to possess an ounce of marijuana - but retail pot shops can't sell more than a quarter-ounce in one day to people without Colorado identification. The purchasing limits were established in 2013 to prevent marijuana diversion out of state. [continues 209 words]
Job Could Be One of Highest-Paid in State Government State health officials want to hire someone to keep an eye on marijuana legalization - at potentially one of the highest salaries in state government. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is advertising a position for a "marijuana health effects and research manager." The job will involve monitoring the health consequences of legalization; gathering data from hospitals, emergency rooms and poison control centers; and helping to lead an advisory committee that produces a report on legalization's outcomes. [continues 270 words]
Dear Stoner: Why did the annual 4/20 rally (the one with Lil Wayne and Wiz, canceled on April 16) have to jump through so many obstacles for a permit, but the stoner fest at Civic Center on April 20 was just fine? Scott Dear Scott: The Official 4/20 Rally isn't just a group of potheads coming together; it comes with vendor booths, food carts and musical performances, and it requires tickets to get in, with some of the VIP tickets costing significant amounts of money. Because of all those commercial factors, the City of Denver considers it a "special event," so the event's organizers must register with the city for permits to hold the rally at Civic Center Park every year. And it's not just one or two permits that are needed: After notifying the surrounding neighborhood of the event, organizers must obtain permits from the Denver Fire Department, the Denver Police Department, Excise and Licenses and the Department of Environmental Health - and that's just the first four, with more to go after that. Unfortunately for everyone on April 16, Mother Nature doesn't issue permits. [continues 251 words]
From page 2A In March, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed Senate Bill 15, which reforms how pesticides can be used on marijuana. The original rules simply included a list of which pesticides could be legally used to grow marijuana. This new legislation instead provides a list of criteria that all pesticides must pass in order to be legally used to grow marijuana. The interesting thing about this legislation is not exactly what it entails, but how quickly it traveled through the legal process to become law. It was introduced in the Colorado Senate on Jan. 13 and by March 9 the bill was signed and made law. This shows that when legislation is very bipartisan, it can quickly travel through the bill process. Colorado is lucky that we have both parties' support to be a model state on how the legalization of marijuana should be done. Charles Bryce DeHaven, Littleton [end]
In addition to all the consumption-oriented festivities that went down on April 20, a march on City Hall brought a small but mighty crowd of medical marijuana supporters out to vent some frustrations. Their message? Leave our plants alone. Amendment 20 may have legalized medical marijuana back in 2000, but patients now feel their rights are under attack. That attack comes in the form of a proposed ordinance to limit all residences in the Springs to 12 marijuana plants total, period, no matter how many adults, patients or caregivers live there. [continues 520 words]
Nebraska and Oklahoma are trying again to overturn marijuana legalization in Colorado, this time by asking to intervene in an ongoing court case. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a proposed lawsuit brought against Colorado by the two states, leaving the states without a court to hear their complaints. Earlier this month, Nebraska and Oklahoma responded by asking to be added to a case at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. That case is the consolidation of two separate appeals filed by legalization opponents whose lawsuits were dismissed by a lower court. Nebraska and Oklahoma's motion means that all of the ongoing challenges against Colorado's legalization of marijuana have, for the moment, merged into a single court case. [continues 277 words]
This week the Colorado Secretary of State will hold the second hearing to discuss the Marijuana Initiative. Issues to be discussed are the potency, child proofing, labeling of potency of marijuana, and others. When we ask two questions: What will happen if these marijuana products are unregulated and what may happen if they are regulated? We see the answer to the first question as the marijuana industry brings us ever stronger and stronger products. The THC levels had an average of 12.6 percent THC in 2013 according to the National Drug Control Strategy. Post legalization of marijuana has brought us concentrates of 62.1 percent THC. Concentrates of marijuana in Colorado varies between 60-80 percent and rates as high as 95 percent has been observed. These unregulated potencies have and are now contributing to costly emergency room visits, hospitalization and traffic accidents and deaths. [continues 172 words]
"Councilman Don Knight told News 5 last month as the council voted for the ban that he didn't think the city was responsible for providing marijuana users a place to light up." Paging earth to Don Knight! No one requested the city to provide places for users to light up. That entire initiative was brought through private enterprise by citizens of our city. No city funding or interference is required. Robert Wheeler Colorado Springs [end]
Colorado kids are not smoking more pot since the drug became legal - but their older siblings and parents certainly are, according to a long-awaited report giving the most comprehensive data yet on the effects of the state's 2012 recreational-marijuana law. The state released a report Monday detailing changes in everything from pot arrests to tax collections to calls to Poison Control. Surveys given to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers indicate that youth marijuana use didn't rise significantly in the years after the 2012 vote. [continues 68 words]
Councilor Don Knight says military perceptions influence his strategy. City Councilor Don Knight says a phone call in September really put cannabis clubs on his radar. His constituent was complaining about My Club 420, which had moved into the Rockrimmon shopping center. "I found out through research there was no avenue at all for neighbors to have a voice on whether a club should go in their neighborhood or not," Knight told the Independent. "So I wanted to do something about that." [continues 565 words]
Steve DeFino is remarkably mellow for a guy with shrapnel still lodged in his body and memories of war on his mind. At the Dab Lounge on Circle Drive near Palmer Park Boulevard, a light haze drifts above the booths, about half of which are occupied on this weekday afternoon. A few dogs roam around, as do some pool balls on the newish table. "A year ago I couldn't do this," DeFino says, sitting on a stool in the back of the place where the arcade machines' bleeps and bloops weave into a soundtrack of '90s R&B. [continues 1931 words]
Hospitals and treatment centers in Colorado have seen an increase in marijuana use among patients since recreational pot became legal in January 2014, while weed-related arrests have predictably plummeted significantly, a report reveals. While the author of an 147-page study released by the Colorado Department of Public Safety on Monday cautions that it's too soon to measure perfectly the impact of the state's first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana laws, statistics suggest that facilities have seen a surge with respect to patients who were hospitalized after consuming cannabis. [continues 655 words]
A Report Is the State's First Try at Measuring Impact of Legalization. Colorado's treatment centers have seen a trend toward heavier marijuana use among patients in the years after the state legalized the drug, according to a new report from the state Department of Public Safety. The 143-page report released Monday is the state's first comprehensive attempt at measuring and tracking the consequences of legalization. In 2014, more than a third of patients in treatment reported near-daily use of marijuana, according to the report. In 2007, less than a quarter of patients reported such frequency of use. [continues 585 words]
We were somewhere north of Denver, not far from the pot farm, when my neighbor on the party bus pulled hard on his pipe and said: "Know what it is I love about this country? Everyone gets stoned." He was a big, bearded fellow who had come up from his cattle ranch in Kansas, and though he didn't seem like the usual type for a cannabis foodie tour, I felt that he was right. After all, with us on the bus that afternoon was a Whitmanesque array of stoned Americans. There they were, puffing blunts beneath the blinking purple lights: a gay couple from Rhode Island, some multiethnic techies from Atlanta, a rowdy group of white dudes who'd just flown in from Houston for a bachelor party and a 60-year-old Boston mother with a beach house in the Hamptons. Everyone gets stoned. [continues 3195 words]
Illicit Pot Increasingly Is Being Grown in Homes and Shipped Out of State. Authorities say organized crime elements with out-of-state ties increasingly are using Colorado homes to grow large amounts of marijuana illegally for transport and sale across the nation. About 30 locations, many of them homes, were targeted in raids on Thursday by authorities searching for illegal marijuana operations. The uptick in these so-called "pirate grows" has become a priority for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, who have dedicated resources to quashing the trend. [continues 937 words]
Dear Stoner: I want to celebrate Denver's biggest unofficial holiday on 4/20. Do you have any advice? Gone Ganja Dear Ganja: Our day of gathering is upon us, but 4/20 in Denver has become much more than a simple day of heavy blazing now that Colorado's economy has gone green. While many of us will be enjoying a blunt bigger than Dikembe Mutombo's fingers, it's important to see through the dabs and kush smoke to celebrate responsibility and not forget what it took to get here - and how far we still have to go. [continues 391 words]
"I wake up every day and I still can't believe I'm selling marijuana," Ieshia Jiron says, reflecting on the past year she's been working at Leaf on the Mesa, a medical and recreational dispensary in downtown Pueblo. She spent nearly two decades working at Target, then some time dabbling in real estate until some friends approached her to help get the new business off the ground. "We were sitting on buckets then, but business really took off," she says. "It's been amazing." [continues 667 words]
Schools in Colorado would be required to allow parents to provide medical marijuana treatment to their children on school grounds under a bill that won approval in a state legislative committee Monday. House Bill 1373 gives school districts the authority to write policies limiting where on campus the treatment could take place or what forms of cannabis can be administered. If the district fails to create a policy, parents or private caregivers would have no limitations on where they could administer the treatment, said state Rep. Jonathan Singer, a Longmont Democrat who is the bill's sponsor. [continues 117 words]
DENVER (AP) - Schools in Colorado would be forced to allow students to use medical pot under a bill that cleared its first hurdle Monday at the state Legislature. The bill updates a new law that gives school districts the power to permit medical marijuana treatments for students under certain conditions. Patient advocates call the law useless because none of Colorado's 178 school districts currently allows such use. The bill cleared a House committee Monday on a vote of 10 to 3 and now awaits a vote by the full House. [continues 191 words]
It's time for Colorado to have a frank discussion about marijuana potency. In recent years, Colorado's marijuana has become a fundamentally different and harder drug, with unprecedented levels of THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. Nationally, the potency of marijuana has more than tripled since the mid-1990s, with the average at 12.6 percent THC in 2013, according to the National Drug Control Strategy. But Colorado's post-legalization pot has reached even higher levels. Here, the average potency of marijuana flowers/buds is 17.1 percent THC and the average potency of concentrates is 62.1 percent THC, according to the Marijuana Equivalency in Portion and Dosage report, prepared for the Colorado Department of Revenue. [continues 510 words]
Since 55 percent of Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, Colorado has experienced record economic growth, record tourism, and record job creation. In addition, Denver was recently named the best city to live in the United States by U.S. News and World Report based on factors such as quality of life, low crime rate, and job prospects. The doomsday predictions of the prohibitionists never came to pass. Colorado is experiencing near record low traffic fatalities, and teen marijuana usage has remained relatively stagnant. [continues 496 words]
Inside Colorado
