Re: "Waking up to opioid addiction," March 21 editorial (reprinted from The Washington Post).

The editorial supporting the Centers for Disease Control's recommendations for a sensible approach to combat opioid addiction was welcome news. Most surprising, lawmakers were able to work across the aisle on what they agreed was a public health issue, rather than a "law enforcement matter." In 2010, in the early days of medical cannabis in Colorado, my wife and I started our small Colorado business and first began researching cannabis as a natural, non-addictive remedy. Colorado is ahead of the curve on this issue and I'm proud to be part of the industry that is at the forefront of finding alternative solutions.

Ralph Morgan, Denver

The writer is CEO of O.Pen VAPE.

[end]

Denver No Longer Will Have Tests Done

More than a year after Denver started actively policing the marijuana industry's use of pesticides, the city's health department is changing its enforcement procedures.

Starting April 15, the Denver Department of Environmental Health will no longer test marijuana and pot products in a privately owned cannabis testing facility, the city wrote in an industry bulletin e- mailed Friday. Instead it will place marijuana products suspected of being contaminated with banned pesticides on hold, notify the state agencies that have picked up the recall process initially started by DEH and possibly order the plants or products to be destroyed, the bulletin said.

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Re: "Pot laws stand; Court won't take case," March 22 news story.

Had the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nebraska and Oklahoma suing Colorado for a marijuana law they did not like, then the door would be open for any state to sue any other state for any law they did not like - such as abortion, gun control, and voting rights.

States' rights would be a thing of the past.

Bill Butler, Longmont

[end]

HOTCHKISS, COLO. - This mountain town of coal miners and organic farmers wasted no time in saying no to marijuana. After Colorado's 2012 vote legalizing marijuana, local leaders concerned about crime and the character of their tranquil downtown twice voted to ban the recreational and medical pot shops springing up in other towns.

But then coal crumbled. One mine here in the North Fork Valley has shut down amid a wave of coal bankruptcies and slowdowns, and another has announced that it will go dark.

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As Colorado Coal Declines, Leaders Look to Pot Revenue

HOTCHKISS, Colo. - This mountain town of coal miners and organic farmers wasted no time in saying no to marijuana. After Colorado's 2012 vote legalizing marijuana, local leaders concerned about crime and the character of their tranquil downtown twice voted to ban the recreational and medical pot shops springing up in other towns.

But then coal crumbled. One mine here in the North Fork Valley has shut down amid a wave of coal bankruptcies and slowdowns, and another has announced that it will go dark. The closings added to a landscape of layoffs and economic woes concussing mining-dependent towns from West Virginia to Wyoming. And as Hotchkiss searches for a new economic lifeline, some people are asking: What about marijuana?

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HOTCHKISS, Colo. - This mountain town of coal miners and organic farmers wasted no time in saying no to marijuana. After Colorado's 2012 vote legalizing marijuana, local leaders concerned about crime and the character of their tranquil downtown twice voted to ban the recreational and medical pot shops springing up in other towns.

But then coal crumbled. One mine here in the North Fork Valley has shut down amid a wave of coal bankruptcies and slowdowns, and another has announced that it will go dark. The closings added to a landscape of layoffs and economic woes concussing mining-dependent towns from West Virginia to Wyoming. And as Hotchkiss searches for a new economic lifeline, some people are asking: What about marijuana?

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Dear Stoner: Where can I find house rentals to cultivate marijuana with a landlord who will approve?

Jeannette

Dear Jeannette: It'd take some serious balls to ask if you can cultivate pot in the property owner's basement right before signing the lease - and those big balls would probably get your rental application ripped to pieces. Pot-friendly real-estate websites like potprop.com, weedrentals.com and 420mls.com all have listings of uninhibited homes for sale or rent, and some even list industrial warehouses and greenhouses for grows. As cool as the content is on these sites, though, you're probably best cutting out the middleman if you just want to rent an average home. My quick search using the term "marijuana" on Craigslist's Apartments/Housing Rentals section found a shitload of listings that explicitly said "No marijuana growing," but it also brought up a healthy number that advertised the landlord's acceptance of cultivation - but many of those landlords were charging quite a bit more per month than the rates for similar, more picky properties.

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Of all the questions lingering over Colorado's burgeoning pot industry, perhaps none is weightier than who will control federal drug enforcement as of January 2017. How Americans vote on the top of the ticket in the November election could be make-or-break for the future of legal weed in the Centennial State. And of all the remaining candidates, only one appears a reliable ally to the legalization movement. (Don't bother sitting down, this will not be a shocker.) It's the democratic socialist from Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

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Dear Stoner: What's the best container for pot? I see all these expensive jars but have yet to find anything that works better than my $2 Mason jar.

Quail

Dear Quail: For some sad reason, many potheads fail to see your wisdom. Maybe people just get bored with Mason jars and want to switch things up after staring at the same container for years, but I really don't get it. Smoke shops and dispensaries alike use fancy jars with "pop and seal" technology, or stackable plastic containers with nothing more than a screw top, and while they might look a little cooler than a boring Mason jar, they don't come close to keeping the air out as well. I've had $20 pop-and-seal jars that let my weed get dry just as fast as a pill bottle, and since then I've stayed true to my mini-sized Mason. Still, it's a lot of fun to walk into a home-goods store like Bed Bath & Beyond or the Container Store and casually say, "I'm looking for something to store my marijuana." Even if you just want Mason jars, it's worth the look on an employee's face.

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On Tuesday, March 8, after a marathon public comment period, Colorado Springs City Council voted to ban cannabis clubs in the city by 2024. The 6-3 vote comes after years of deliberation over how to handle the clubs, which provide a social setting to consume legal cannabis. Though many in attendance testified that the clubs are a place of community, refuge and healing, detractors see the clubs' mere existence as flagrantly defying the previous Council's decision to opt out of recreational sales following statewide legalization.

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Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday cautioned other states about the economic impacts of legalizing marijuana.

At a conference in Dallas on public-private partnerships-like the U. S 36 expansion and toll lanes - Hickenlooper was showing a slide dealing with the boom in the millennial population when he said: "You get all those young people who do certain things that some of us oppose and aren't crazy about, like legalizing marijuana. Let me tell you, if you're trying to encourage businesses to move to your state, some of the larger businesses, think twice about legalizing marijuana."

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The following question was submitted last week, and answered when the Cannabis Cup was still looking at an April event in Pueblo. Earlier this week, it announced that it will instead hold the Cannabis Cup April 15-17 in Southern California. But we're leaving up our Stoner's answer, because it includes other information useful for marijuana tourists who'll be visiting the Front Range next month.

Dear Stoner: I booked my hotel near the old Cannabis Cup venue. Will there be stoner buses going to Pueblo? I'm mad at High Times for moving it - two-hour drive, with cops!

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High Times magazine's flagship event, the U. S. Cannabis Cup, is relocating from Colorado to California next month.

Colorado's first-of-itskind marijuana laws allowed the event to grow into the largest High Times Cannabis Cup in the world, drawing up to 35,000 visitors each day in April 2015 at the Denver Mart in Adams County. But after Adams County commissioners last month rejected High Times' permit for this year's U. S. Cannabis Cup, organizers announced a tentative move to Pueblo-where the Cup ran into regulatory issues and concerns over timing.

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As Colorado Springs city officials ponder the future of cannabis clubs, an argument that's often floated for doing away with them is that they make bad neighbors: Marijuana lures an undesirable crowd that causes a ruckus and disturbs the peace.

Not so, says Phil McDonald, owner of the Springs Bikini Bar, which shares a wall with the Speakeasy Vape Lounge. Another club, The Lazy Lion, which was raided by federal agents late last month, is on the same block.

McDonald, a former marshal with the Colorado Springs Police Department who's involved in local Republican politics, says that it took some prodding before he agreed to take over the bar on East Bijou Street from his sister and brother-in-law. His hands were already pretty full with four other local businesses and two young sons. But the biggest cause for pause was the bar's neighbor.

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Letter-writer Barbara St. John asks: "If marijuana is bad for people, how can it be good for Colorado?" There's a lot to be said for how ending cannabis prohibition is good for Colorado. However, one of the distinguished reasons is Coloradans can hold our heads high and show the nation and the world we've decided to end an act of government-subsidized discrimination in a country where the prevalence of discrimination is undeniable. And make no mistake - bigots orchestrated cannabis prohibition from the beginning as an act of racism. That makes Colorado great.

Stan White, Dillon

[end]

Officials behind the High Times Cannabis Cup have told Pueblo County they are no longer interested in obtaining a special event permit for the popular pot festival, scheduled for April.

In a statement released during the weekend, a representative for High Times didn't specify why the magazine chose to end its quest to locate the vast outdoor marijuana fair-the biggest of its kind in the world- in southern Colorado.

The magazine said it respected "the need for all parties involved to have confidence in all operational aspects of the event" and that it looked forward to "hosting a future High Times event in Colorado."

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Nebraska and Oklahoma Are Asking U. S. Justices to Overturn Legalization.

The U. S. Supreme Court may be nearing a decision on whether to hear a case brought against Colorado by two neighboring states over marijuana legalization.

Supreme Court justices were scheduled to meet privately Friday to discuss the case, which was filed in 2014 by the attorneys general in Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The justices won't have decided at the meeting whether to upend legalization in Colorado, as the lawsuit requests. Instead, the justices must decide first whether even to take up the case.

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Researcher Wants to Investigate Long- Term Use Among MS Patients.

A Colorado State University researcher is launching a crowdfunding campaign to study the effects of long-term marijuana use among multiple sclerosis patients in northern Colorado.

CSU is quick to point out that the research project will not involve providing cannabis or encouraging its use. The study will "simply examine existing users who have decided to treat their MS symptoms with medical marijuana and voluntarily agree to participate in the study," the university said.

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Dear Stoner: Where can I find cannabis-friendly events around Denver? I have a business in cannabis and would like to host a smoke-friendly event, but I'm not sure where to look.

Tarik

Dear Tarik: Hosting a cannabis-friendly event in Colorado is pretty easy, but hosting a pot-smoking-friendly event? Not so much. For starters, any event at which you hope to allow pot smoking would have to take place at a private venue that is either outside or doesn't have to comply with the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act (a law that bans smoking at indoor venues unless otherwise permitted) - and there are very few of those. Even after finding a venue that fits your criteria, however, you'd have to apply to the local governing body for an event permit. That's not always easy; High Times was just denied such a permit by Adams County for its Cannabis Cup because of law enforcement concerns over attendance and public pot consumption.

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Considered dangerous drugs by the federal government, marijuana and industrial hemp are still listed in the Controlled Substances Act as Schedule I drugs. While the federal government has issued legislative promises to not spend money in prosecution of cannabis activity in states in which it is legal, it has been firm in withholding any actions of endorsement by federal departments, leading many to assume that an organic certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is precluded by federal law.

But on Jan. 27, 2016, CBDRx, a Colorado-based hemp company, announced that it received two USDA organic certifications for its more than 130 acres of industrial hemp, giving it two of only seven in the country and the only two in Colorado.

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