Author Kate Simmons

For decades, cannabis has been portrayed as an illicit substance associated with burnouts and addicts, one that clouds mental performance and drains ambition. However, long-standing opinions are beginning to change as more research continues to demonstrate the medical benefits of THC and CBD oil with regard to such debilitating conditions as Alzheimer’s. Senior citizens, who lived during the time of marijuana’s demonizing prohibition, ironically may be the fastest-growing demographic that can benefit the most from its medicinal properties.

Seizing the opportunity to serve this underrepresented group, Etain, one of the five registered medical marijuana suppliers in New York State, is seeking to target nursing homes and elderly patients.  According to Etain’s homepage, this family-run, women-owned business is “committed to manufacturing clean, safe, and consistent medical marijuana products for patients in New York State.”

Charles Smith grew up in a tough part of Los Angeles, and by the time he was fourteen, he was already involved in dealing marijuana for one of the city’s most prominent gangs: the Inglewood Family Gangster Bloods. To keep him from getting in deeper, when he was fifteen his mother sent him to live with his father, an Army vet, in Colorado.

But that didn’t keep him out of trouble. At the age of seventeen, Smith was arrested in Denver for possession and distribution of marijuana. A year after he was released from prison, at the age of 23, he was arrested again, this time for armed robbery. Sentenced to 64 years in prison, he was sent to Colorado State Penitentiary in 1998. Five years later, he was moved to Fremont Correctional Facility.

When he first went to prison, Smith was angry, violent, mad at the world. But then he found both God and Stephen R. Covey.

A Denver City Council committee met on March 13 to consider a presentation by the Marijuana Industry Group, which made a case for extending the hours of operation for dispensaries in the city. If approved, dispensaries would be able to stay open until midnight instead of 7 p.m.

Every municipality in Colorado that allows recreational marijuana sales has later hours than Denver, according to Kristi Kelly, MIG’s executive director, who also serves on Denver’s Social Consumption Advisory Committee. Dispensaries in Boulder and Aurora are open until 10 p.m., and dispensaries in neighboring Edgewater and Glendale are open until midnight.

“Be a crazy, dumb saint of the mind…,” proclaims Daniel Landes, standing in a third-floor attic space in south Denver that feels nice, warm and present.

At first glance, this class may look like your average creative-writing workshop, with pens sprinkled across two tables in the center of the room, alongside desk lamps and composition notebooks. But Lit on Lit is a new kind of creative-writing class, one that puts something different on those tables: a bowl of cannabis and rolling papers to help spark creativity.

This is the first writing class in the country that invites attendees to smoke legal cannabis during the brainstorming session and the prompts.

Much of Denver’s fourth Social Consumption Advisory Committee meeting on March 11 was spent discussing the proposal to allow marijuana clubs, which is currently before the Colorado Legislature.

SB 17-184, the Private Marijuana Clubs Open and Public Use bill, passed a Senate committee last week in a bipartisan five-to-two vote and is on its way to the Senate floor. Denver’s advisory committee, which was set up after the passage of  I-300, wants to ensure that as the city implements the voter-approved social consumption initiative, it does not interfere with the language in the state’s bill.

After hours of testimony on Wednesday, March 8, a Colorado House committee approved Senate Bill 17-17, which would make people suffering from PTSD and other stress disorders eligible for medical marijuana, in an 8-1 vote. It now moves on to a full vote of the House.

“We’re in the final stretch, and the momentum has really kicked in,” says Cindy Sovine-Miller, a lobbyist working with the Hoban Law Group to help shepherd the proposal through the Colorado Legislature. “There were two and a half hours of testimony of people who were opposed to this bill — testimony from very credible people. The testimony from the people who are actually impacted by this really won the day.”

The Colorado Legislature is loaded up with marijuana measures this week, including proposals to establish pot clubs and to add PTSD to the list of patient ailments that can be treated with medical marijuana. And on March 8, the Senate Business, Labor and Technology committee approved Senator Tim Neville‘s bill to allow medical marijuana delivery systems for patients and businesses.

Senate Bill 17-192 calls for a state licensing authority to create an endorsement for existing medical marijuana licenses, permitting them to make deliveries to patients in need in areas where medical marijuana is currently sold.

In a 34 to 1 vote, the Colorado Senate passed the Post-Traumatic Stress Bill; today, March 8, it’s scheduled for a public hearing before the House State Affairs Committee.

Adam Foster, lead attorney on the case, says it’s time for Colorado to join the 21 states with medicinal cannabis laws that have approved PTSD as a qualifying condition.

“Colorado has been the leader in so many different regards with regard to the cannabis plant, but we are very much behind the curve as far as using medical cannabis to treat PTSD,” he says. “Every other state that has considered the issue has approved medical cannabis for the treatment of PTSD, and Colorado is really an outlier in that regard.”

1 3 4 5 6 7 25