Thursday night, I had the privilege to observe the debate between Gov. John Hickenlooper and his opponent, former Congressman Bob Beauprez. There were three questions in particular that struck me as important for understanding the differences between the candidates.

The first of these came over a question about recreational marijuana. Asked if it was time to consider a repeal of the law passed two years ago, Hickenlooper stated that it was too early to say, and stressed that tighter regulation and more research into the effects of marijuana on developing minds would be a more prudent way forward. Beauprez, when given the chance to answer the same question, stated that it was high time that repeal be put to a vote. This was extraordinary for a few reasons. First, because the issue of legalization had already been put to a vote two years ago, with obvious results. Second, Beauprez, supposedly representing the party of small government, would like to bring back prohibition, which has a nasty habit of increasing the size of government, in both enforcement and bureaucracy. Lastly, marijuana is a rapidly growing industry, the repeal of which would hurt the economy and drive all of the projected $40 million in tax revenue back underground. In ! short, no question better illustrated the lack of integrity between the rhetoric and the reality of the Beauprez campaign.

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Several Appear on Ballots, Including Whether Lakewood Will Allow Retail Shops.

Several marijuana measures, mostly tax questions, are on ballots across the state this election season, including whether Lakewood will allow recreational shops in the city of 145,000 residents.

The Lakewood City Council voted to put the recreational marijuana question on the ballot in July after a public hearing on the subject. At the July 14 meeting, the council banned potential marijuana businesses in the city, including recreational marijuana social clubs, hash oil production, and the cultivation, manufacturing and testing of recreational marijuana.

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Brew pub entrepreneur John Hickenlooper, when running for his first term as governor, had an intriguing idea. Colorado's Front Range could become the Napa Valley of high-end domestic beer. Gov. Hickenlooper is facing one of the toughest re-election fights of his political career. Several polls suggest he's in a close race against Beauprez, a former member of the U.S. House.

Four years later, we're the Napa Valley of pot. It happened under the governor's watch. He clearly doesn't like the fact we're the butt of late-night drug jokes and a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. We were known for mountains, eclectic towns and outdoor adventure. Today, we're first known for a degree of marijuana lenience found nowhere else in the world. Even this year's trip to the Super Bowl became endless fodder for druggie jokes on social media and late-night TV.

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DENVER - He still thinks Colorado voters made a mistake when they legalized marijuana two years ago, but Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is not above taking the pot industry's campaign money as he faces a tough re-election battle next month.

And when Mr. Hickenlooper denounced the vote to legalize recreational pot smoking as "reckless" during a debate this week, there were more than a few double takes from those in the legalization movement here.

Not because Mr. Hickenlooper's views on legalizing marijuana aren't well known - the Democratic governor has long opposed it - but because the governor has been privately soliciting campaign funds from the marijuana industry even as he publicly condemns the November 2012 vote that ushered in the state's recreational pot market.

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Marijuana sales in Colorado saw a 10 percent bump in August - and industry leaders don't expect that growth to slow anytime soon.

The sales of recreational and medical marijuana in Colorado each jumped more than 10 percent from July to August 2014, according to numbers released Thursday by the Colorado Department of Revenue.

In August, customers purchased more than $33 million in recreational cannabis - up from $29.7million in July and $24.7million in June. Consumers bought more than $32.2 million in medical marijuana in August - up from $28.9million in July and $28.6 million in June.

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Jonathan Singer is as improbable a cannabis advocate as you'll ever find. The representative for House District 11 never has been a user and certainly never intended to become a leading voice on behalf of cannabis legalization in Colorado.

"If someone had told me in 2011 that three years later I would be running for re-election for a seat I didn't have," Singer, who rebelled in high school by not using cannabis, said recently. "Or that by the end of my second year that I would have helped pass a statewide tax increase on legal marijuana, I would have laughed at them.

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Dear Stoner: I've got crews coming in to work on things like my plumbing and some minor remodeling in the coming weeks (as well as a regular pest-control guy). I've been hiding my pot from the pest guy, but should I really care about putting away my pot and pipes when people come over to work on my house?

Al Bonglin

Dear Al: This is a pretty broad question that requires a rather nuanced answer. Generally speaking, no. If it's just you in your place, or you and other adults, you don't need to worry about hiding something that is completely legal. But there are still some things to consider before pulling out your bong when the Orkin man comes around. The presence of kids in the house should play heavily into your decision. We know that it's totally normal for parents to have a puff, but if it rubs a contractor the wrong way, he could feel morally obligated to report you as a negligent parent. That may seem overly paranoid, but it's happened: In 2011, a Papa John's driver in Aurora called the cops on a dad for toking up medical pot while his kid slept upstairs. Thankfully, the officer who responded had some common sense and no charges were filed, but all it takes is one phone call and an unsympathetic cop to severely complicate your life. Using pot around kids isn't automatically grounds for negligence charges in this state, but remember, we're still in the infancy of this whole legal-pot thing. If you're growing herb, our advice is to keep it under wraps if possible. We still take the old-school approach and feel it's best to avoid showing off your harvest to anyone you don't know well. Think about how much you'd hate to come home from work to a brand-new water heater and an empty grow room just because you needlessly showed off your Island Sweet Skunk harvest to the plumber.

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The constitutional amendment establishing medical marijuana in Colorado was pretty clear when it came to employers and pot.

It should not, the amendment said, be construed as requiring "any employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any work place."

That seemed straightforward to us, and apparently to two lower courts that ruled against a man suing his former employer for firing him over his weed use.

Yet Colorado Supreme Court justices seem to find the issue perplexing. The court last week considered an appeal brought by medical marijuana user Brandon Coats, who was rendered a quadriplegic by a car accident.

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Use of Cages Has Been Criticized by the State's Legal Marijuana Industry; Mocked by Some Young People

DENVER-In a state where legal marijuana seemingly is everywhere, Colorado public health officials have taken an unusual approach to warning teenagers about the dangers of the drug: likening young pot smokers to laboratory animals. Concerned about a potential jump in youth marijuana use now that the state has legalized the drug for adults, Colorado is displaying three human-size cages in various communities with signs that bear provocative messages about the drug's pitfalls, as part of its "Don't Be A Lab Rat" campaign. "Does Marijuana really cause schizophrenia in teenagers? Smoke and find out," one sign says. "Subjects needed. Must be a teenager. Must smoke weed. Must have 8 IQ points to spare," reads another.

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Shops on Main Street in Breckenridge sell T-shirts that read: "Dude, this whole town is high," a double-entendre on the resort area's elevation and its party-spot vibe.

From the ski area to the town's aging ski bums-turned-respectable citizens to the local chamber of commerce, everyone here winks and turns a blind eye to a little harmless pot consumption.

But now that marijuana is legal statewide, the prospect of retail pot shops in the historic downtown has some residents clutching pearls and expressing dismay that it would detract from the "family-friendly atmosphere" in Breckenridge.

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Step into a Colorado pot dispensary at random, and you'll long for the luxuries of the D.M.V.

Metal bars cover windows. Vinyl signs are tacked to walls. Guys in hoodie sweatshirts greet you from behind the counter. Even the act of ordering the product itself is borderline absurd. What grown adult can respectfully walk into a store and ask for an eighth of Green Krack and a nub of Big Buddha Cheese, please?

But that experience is changing, thanks to a new breed of entrepreneur in Colorado - young, ambitious and often female - that is trying to reach a more sophisticated clientele in everything from language to packaging to social events.

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Dear Stoner: Hey, can you explain what the laws are in Colorado for home cultivation of cannabis for personal consumption? Thanks.

MM From Aol.com

Dear MM: We've addressed this in bits and pieces over the past few years, but considering you're still on an AOL account, we'll assume you don't keep up with current events. So in a nutshell, here are the state's cultivation laws:

Adults can grow up to six plants at home. Three of those plants can be flowering (budding) at one time, while the other three have to remain in what is called "vegetation" - meaning they are still growing in size but haven't started growing flowers. Cannabis is light-sensitive, so converting a plant "in veg" to flowering merely requires switching it from a 24-hour light cycle to one with only twelve hours of light. That means you'll have to keep your three flowering plants separate from your other three. The state hasn't set a maximum number of legal plants for a household, but some cities have. Denver limits home grows to twelve plants total, even if there are more than two adults over 21 living in the house.

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Eric Holder tendered his resignation last week, though he will stay in office until a successor is chosen for the attorney general position. Given congressional inertia on presidential nominees, he could still fill out Obama's term, so I'm not holding my breath.

I'll leave his ultimate legacy to others, but on the subject of cannabis, Holder has a mixed record. While he has never advocated for legalization or decriminalization, he is the first attorney general to publicly question whether the federal government should reevaluate its cannabis laws.

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Hundreds of Pounds of the Drug, Jewelry and $800,000were Seized From Firms With Colombian Ties.

Federal agents seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana, 161 pieces of jewelry and $800,000- including nearly $450,000 stashed in the trunk of a car-from Colorado pot businesses with Colombian ties, according to records obtained Wednesday by The Denver Post.

The forfeiture document, in which federal authorities formally seek to confiscate the items, offers the most detailed account yet of the allegations stemming from Denver-area raids executed in November. They were the largest-ever federal raids on the Colorado marijuana industry.

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It's hard to match Manitou Springs' marijuana detractors for showmanship - Facebook pictures reveal the awesome presence of a donkey accompanying neighborhood canvassers. But the plant's supporters have something up their sleeve, as well, prior to the November vote: the formation of the Manitou Springs Marijuana Council and an inaugural launch event, co-organizer Mike Olson tells the Indy.

"Basically, what we're doing the weekend of the Emma Crawford Races, which there'll be thousands of people here, we'll have a festival," says Olson, who otherwise works as a private investigator. "We've got, like, 36 vendors; inside the building, we're going to have dispensaries and informational booths, different things like that. And we'll have a vape lounge setup in the back, where people can test all the different products from all the different vendors that will be there."

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DENVER (AP) - Marijuana may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it.

Now, the state's highest court is considering whether workers' off-duty use of medical marijuana is protected under state law.

Colorado's Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case involving Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who was fired by the Dish Network after failing a drug test in 2010.

Coats said he never got high at work. But marijuana's intoxicating chemical, THC, can stay in the system for weeks.

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Colorado court to rule on legality of dismissing employee who smoked legally on his own time

Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it. Now, the state's highest court is considering whether workers' off-duty use of medical marijuana is protected under state law.

Colorado's Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case involving Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who was fired by the Dish Network after failing a drug test in 2010. Coats said he never got high at work. But pot's intoxicating chemical, THC, can stay in the system for weeks.

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DENVER (AP) - Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it.

Now, the state's highest court is considering whether workers' off-duty medical marijuana use is protected under an obscure state law.

Colorado's Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case involving Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who was fired by the Dish Network after failing a drug test in 2010, even though the company did not allege that he was impaired on the job.

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Colorado embarks on a new era for its legal recreational marijuana industry Wednesday, when two major changes will affect the industry's makeup.

The first is the entrance of newcomers to the industry. Colorado regulators gave people who already owned a licensed medical-marijuana business a nine-month head start in opening recreational pot shops. Wednesday is the first day people who didn't previously own a medical-marijuana store can get into the recreational industry.

Tuesday, the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division said it has issued licenses to 46 stores, 37 marijuana-cultivation facilities and 13 marijuana-infused products makers that allow them to start operating Wednesday.

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Even Justices Scratching Heads Over Rights to Use Pot, Rights of Employers

A Colorado Supreme Court hearing that will have major implications for marijuana and the workplace ended Tuesday with the state's most esteemed justices mostly scratching their heads.

The debate topic was this: If it isn't illegal to use medical marijuana, does that make it a "lawful" activity for which employers can't fire you?

How the justices answer that question will, for the first time, define whether employers must tolerate medical-marijuana use by their employees and will set whether medical-marijuana patients have any job protection for their cannabis use. The outcome also has implications for recreational marijuana use, which presents similar questions.

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