Author Toke of the Town

Cannabis businesses took over the Colorado Convention Center this week as the National Cannabis Industry Association held its Seed to Sale Show on February 7 and 8. Made up of nearly 1,600 members, the NCIA is one of the largest industry groups in legal cannabis and has been holding annual events in Denver to showcase industry trends and technology for over five years.

The technology around legal cannabis has evolved rapidly since its commercial awakening. Consumer trends and products are constantly changing, and events like the Seed to Sale Show often offer a glimpse into what the future of retail pot will look like. Here are five of my favorite up-and-coming consumer trends from the NCIA convention.

If ogres existed, I don’t think they’d be very pleased with their current reputation. Shrek has turned the ogre, once a fierce and disgusting terror of folklore, into a sweet, funny hero known more for a talking donkey than an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Luckily, cannabis breeders have provided the green monster a second chance at a killer reputation with Ogre, a skunky hybrid that can lean either way, depending on the grower.

Lagunitas Brewing Company is one of the five largest craft-beer companies in the country, and founder and CEO Tony Magee says a lot of that has to do with culture. A big part of the Lagunitas culture is the drug test. “We have a drug-testing policy: You have to test pot,” he told a laughing crowd at the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Seed to Sale Show on Wednesday, February 7. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to try it again.”

Banking and general financial services have been a great white whale for the cannabis industry, as financial institutions continue to be wary of the plant’s illegal status with the feds. But a recent settlement between a Colorado credit union and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City may help reel in a solution.

In a letter sent to Fourth Corner Credit Union on February 2, the Federal Reserve Bank agreed to give the Denver-based credit union a master account, which is necessary for such bank-to-bank relations as cashing checks and transferring money. Fourth Corner had sued the Federal Reserve in 2015 over its refusal to issue the credit union an account and lost in district court, but that decision was overturned in June 2017 by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

When over sixty people attended a presentation on weed and pain management at Louisville’s Balfour Senior Living late last month, most of them were joking about coming for the free samples as they settled into their seats. The audience, mostly made up of seniors who live at facility or people with elderly relatives looking for information, asked a number of questions covering the basics of using cannabis to treat medical issues, including how to get started.

The answer: not cheaply.

Denver’s status as the country’s legal cannabis capital is in jeopardy now that California has started recreational sales, but one study shows that the Mile High City wouldn’t just take a step back if the rest of the world followed suit — it would become irrelevant. There are some questions about how the study’s figures apply to Denver, though.

I’ve been vocal about my hesitation to try strains named for synthetic drugs; they put me in a foul state of mind before I even light up. But a friend of mine recently pointed out that such strains as Herijuana and Opium actually help medical marijuana patients looking for heavy, sedated strains with effects similar to those of prescription medication. While smoking something named for exactly what you’re avoiding sounds a little counterproductive, I could see his point, so I decided to give Opium’s healing power a try after I sprained my toe playing basketball.

There were thirty of us, all women, practicing our breathing in very specific ways for two minutes. Some breathed in through their tongues, rolled like straws, and then out through their noses slowly, while others breathed in and out sharply, using their diaphragms. Both systems felt odd, but the final result left me less skeptical than when I’d first walked in the door.

I felt calmer and less anxious, a common goal of breathing practices and meditation, but that is just one part of the puzzle that Becca Williams solved with cannabis, changing her life in the process. Williams, who describes herself as a “ceremonialist soulcraft practitioner and plant medicine integrationist,” has been performing cannabis elevation ceremonies with a combination of high-CBD flower and Eastern meditation practices for over a year, to “enrich and heal” the lives of others, she says.

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