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Virtually every part of the economy has been affected by efforts to limit the spread of coronavirus, and that includes the legal cannabis industry. Marijuana and hemp conferences in Colorado that had been scheduled for the spring are postponing or canceling altogether, while pot-friendly hospitality establishments are dealing with cancellations and non-stop efforts to sanitize.

Business owners and travelers have been scrambling to respond to daily developments, leaving event organizers “with loads of uncertainty,” according to Philip Wolf, CEO of Denver’s annual Cannabis Wedding Expo. Originally scheduled for April 5 in Lakewood, the expo was postponed until October 25 after Wolf spoke with vendors, would-be attendees and government officials. He’s also pushed back a Cannabis Wedding Expo in Las Vegas from March to October.

According to a recently published study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, youth marijuana use decreased in the nation’s first three states to legalize recreational pot.

The CDC study, released October 4, reports that marijuana use among children in sixth to tenth grade residing in King County, Washington — the state’s most populated county and home to the Seattle metro area — actually dropped from 2012 to 2016. Further, the CDC study reported that youth marijuana use in Colorado and Oregon followed the same trend. All three state’s legalized recreational marijuana sales by 2015.

Colorado marijuana sales continued their hot streak in August, according to the state Department of Revenue, reaching the highest monthly total ever.

Medical and recreational dispensaries accounted for over $173.2 million in sales in August, DOR data shows. That number is easily the highest for monthly sales since recreational pot stores opened in January 2014, passing July 2019’s previous high mark (approximately $166.3 million) by about 4 percent. This is the third straight month that dispensary sales have broken Colorado’s monthly record.

A sheriff’s department in southern Colorado is putting illegal marijuana growers on notice. In an announcement issued September 16, the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office says that it had found and eradicated over forty illicit pot cultivations over the past several months, and warns that even more raids will follow.

According to LACSO, local sheriff’s deputies and members of several other law enforcement agencies collaboratively investigated and eradicated over forty growing sites in Las Animas County alone in the spring and summer; the street value of the destroyed marijuana is estimated at around $5.76 million.

As the recognized uses of medical marijuana expand, more traditional research foundations are becoming interested in the possibilities of pot. On March 6 and 7, the Parkinson’s Foundation will host its first-ever conference on medical marijuana…in Denver.

According to the 62-year-old organization, the conference will address potential risks and benefits of treating Parkinson’s disease with MMJ by bringing together “a diverse group of experts from academia, clinics, industry, government and the Parkinson’s community to establish a consensus on medical marijuana use in PD.”

“Look at the butt on that,” said Harry.

“He must work out,” Lloyd replied.

This iconic conversation from Dumb and Dumber marked the moment that Harry and Lloyd arrived in Aspen, but that might sound something more like “look at the bud on that” during this week’s fun at Aspen Gay Ski Week.

Why the change in dialogue? The 2019 edition AGSW has sizable support from Colorado’s cannabis industry.

A recent report from a Colorado organization devoted to keeping children away from marijuana advocates for potency limits on cannabis products, which continue to get stronger and stronger.

“This is very different from marijuana in the 1980s,” says Rachel O’Bryan, co-founder of Smart Colorado, whose mission statement notes that the outfit “engages and informs Coloradans on the risks that marijuana poses to youth.” As a result, she maintains, “it’s a fundamentally different game.”

The City of Denver’s marijuana conviction expungement program is online and ready to roll, according to the mayor’s office as well as the district and city attorneys, who collectively announced the news today, January 9.

Dubbed “Turn Over a New Leaf,” the campaign took a year and multiple city departments to implement and aims to dismiss and expunge thousands of convictions for marijuana crimes that are no longer illegal as of 2012, when Coloradans approved recreational marijuana.

Since 2013, the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally funded law-enforcement organization, has been issuing highly critical, persistently biased reports about the impact of marijuana legalization in Colorado.

But beyond a few scattered stories and a brief reference in U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer’s unexpectedly strident September 28 anti-pot op-ed in the Denver Post, the group’s latest salvo, released this month, has gotten comparatively little traction, especially compared to its earliest offerings.

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