Author Kate Simmons

Since it founded a medicinal grow in 2009, Colorado Harvest Company has had a commitment to clean cannabis, adding a recreational operation in 2014 and always improving on a well-oiled system. That system has earned Colorado Harvest Company a growing reputation for quality.

As more and more states have legalized marijuana, Colorado Harvest has been hosting many out-of-state visitors who want to observe grow operations. “The world is watching Colorado, and that’s why it’s so important that we do a good job here,” says Colorado Harvest CEO Tim Cullen. “We have people visiting at least every other week or so.”

Emmett Reistroffer was one of the authors of Initiative 300 and worked on the campaign to get the social-use ordinance passed last November. Now the event planner and policy consultant for Denver Relief Consulting serves on the city’s Social Use Advisory Committee. We sat down with Reistroffer to chat about social use, the first committee meeting, and what he thinks about how the process is going.

For the past four years, any time local police seized cannabis in a criminal investigation, they’ve been required to care for it, either by keeping the plants alive or by returning the marijuana in a usable form to the owner. That’s no longer the case.

On January 23, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that requiring police to store marijuana in evidence is in violation of federal law. The court issued its opinion in the case of the People v. Robert Crouse.

Crouse, a medical marijuana patient, was arrested on May 5, 2011, on charges of cultivation and possession of marijuana after police seized 55 marijuana plants and about 2.9 kilograms of marijuana product from his home. He was charged with a felony count of cultivating more than thirty marijuana plants. Crouse asserted that he was in lawful possession of the cannabis for medical purposes, and a jury acquitted him of marijuana-related drug crimes.

Thirty percent of marijuana businesses are audited each year by the IRS; adding to that pressure is the threat of new regulations the industry may have to adopt. To ease the load, Keegan Peterson founded Wurk, which helps marijuana companies keep track of all their business records — from payroll to scheduling — so that when the IRS or other agencies comes knocking, everything is in one convenient place.

Peterson started the company last year after a friend who owns a dispensary in town was talking with him about the problems that business owners face in the cannabis industry. “They want to be compliant; they just don’t have the tools to do so,” Peterson says. “We do our best to help facilitate that. The government gives you a Rubik’s Cube and says, ‘Hey, figure it out.’ Then they change it, and you have to figure it out again.”

After four states legalized recreational marijuana last year and twice that many approved new medical marijuana laws, at least eleven more are considering changing their laws in 2017. Here are the states and the legislation they’re proposing:

The world hasn’t come to an end. U.S. Representative Ed Perlmutter was told it would when Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana use in November 2012 and he started introducing legislation in Congress that would aid the industry as businesses began to struggle with banking problems, among other issues.

Now, as President Donald Trump takes the oath of office, Perlmutter says he’s not finished fighting for marijuana legalization at the federal level. Perlmutter’s Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act was struck down last summer. Had it passed, it would have banned federal regulators from penalizing financial institutions for providing banking services to legal marijuana businesses; Perlmutter is planning to try again this session.