All year we’ve kept you up to date on all things weed, both here in Colorado and as legalization sweeps the nation.
Here are the stories you were most excited to read.
Author Kate Simmons
This year, Colorado proved just how profitable marijuana can be.
In the first ten months of 2016, Colorado topped $1 billion in marijuana sales, according to the Department of Revenue. By the end of October, the state had racked up $1.1 billion in legal sales of medical and recreational marijuana — a number that easily topped the $996 million in revenue reported in 2015.
Many of the issues that dominated local headlines in 2015, including homelessness, the rising cost of housing and a steady influx of transplants, continued to be hot topics this year. But from an unpredictable, insane election to the media frenzy over the twentieth anniversary of JonBenét Ramsey’s death, 2016 threw out plenty of curveballs.
Cooking with cannabis can be intimidating, so Emma Levy, the chef at BlueKudu, has made it easy for us. She’s created a dark chocolate cookie recipe that pairs with BlueKudu’s Polar Caps bar.
All you need to do is bake the cookies, prepare the chocolate ganache topping and frost the cookies, then chop a Polar Caps bar — which has 100 milligrams of THC — into ten pieces. Place each piece on top of a single cookie for a ten milligram dose — or just sprinkle the cookies with bits of candy cane for an unmedicated treat.
This was the biggest year on record for marijuana: Four more states legalized recreational marijuana, and Colorado passed one billion dollars in sales. If 2016 was any indication, the marijuana market will just keep growing.
We just released our five top marijuana stories for 2016, and Governor John Hickenlooper has set the stage for one of the biggest stories in 2017.
In his budget request for the 2017-’18 fiscal year, Hickenlooper asked Colorado’s lawmakers to put aside $12.3 million of the revenue garnered from marijuana taxes during that time and use the money to build 1,200 new housing units for people on the streets experiencing chronic and episodic homelessness, as well as an additional 300 units every five years for people facing periodic homelessness.
It’s been a big year for pot. More than half the states in the country now allow marijuana use of some kind; Denver expanded its understanding of social use, and voters approved a ballot initiative that will allow marijuana to be smoked in public; and Colorado sold over one billion dollars’ worth of weed in the first ten months of 2016 — yes, that’s billion, with a “b.” Here’s our rundown of the top five marijuana stories in Colorado this year.
Jeanine Moss was out with her girlfriends one night. All of the women in the group consume cannabis in one way or another, and they all decided to smoke together. Everyone started pulling out baggies and tins of weed. The next day, Moss remembers, she started looking for little cases to buy her female friends to hold their marijuana, but she couldn’t find anything.
AnnaBis was born out of necessity, Moss says.
“This is one of those things that you can’t believe didn’t exist already,” Moss explains. “This was a male industry. It was an underground industry, and it was a bunch of men. It just didn’t occur to them…. I think [the cannabis industry is]a good place for women to make things for other women.”
Still trying to figure out what to get that special lady in your life this holiday season? We reached into Stoner Santa’s bag and came up with great gifts for your favorite female toker — from pipes to handbags to date nights. Here are the ten best:
As our resident Stoner, Herbert Fuego reviews a different strain every week, taking you on a journey through past and present smoking experiences and documenting what you can expect when you try some of the best strains out there. Here’s a list of favorites — not Fuego’s (although the descriptions are his), but yours: These are the most popular strain profiles published in 2016. You’re sure to see some old friends on this list, and it might inspire you to make some new ones.