U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions missed major opportunities this week to rail against legal marijuana, giving marijuana-industry experts some much-craved hope that a crackdown is not imminent.
The cannabis-hating U.S. Attorney General delivered a speech at the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas on Wednesday about crime, drugs, and immigration, but failed to mention the state’s newly launched recreational program.
Strict laws in the city and county of Los Angeles have, over the years, led to the closure of hundreds of illicit marijuana dispensaries, action hailed by some as a way to combat drug-related crime such as robberies and loitering.
But a new study contradicts the argument, sometimes made by law enforcement itself, that weed stores are crime magnets. The research, published in the July issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, took a close look at the city’s closure of hundreds of illicit dispensaries in 2010.
It concluded that crime around pot shops forced to shut down actually increased afterward. “When marijuana dispensaries were shut down, we found the opposite of what we were expecting,” says the paper’s co-author, USC business economics professor Tom Y. Chang. “Crime actually increased in the areas that closed relative to the ones allowed to stay open.”
The Colorado Court of Appeals set a new precedent on July 13, ruling that signals from a drug-sniffing dog were not enough evidence for officers to search a vehicle without permission – all thanks to cannabis.
Colorado’s cannabis industry continued to churn in May, the twelfth consecutive month in which marijuana sales topped $100 million in this state.
BDS Analytics calculates that the state’s marijuana revenue tax data for May, just released by the Colorado Department of Revenue, shows that medical and recreational marijuana sales combined account for nearly $127.7 million. Recreational sales in May reached over $90.1 million, while medical sales brought in a little more than $37.5 million.
Colorado was one of the first states to embrace medical marijuana, but that doesn’t mean you can just walk into a hospital with over a pound of pot – yet that’s what a man did at a Lakewood emergency room.
Dear Stoner: I was looking for a specific type of edible candy last weekend. I couldn’t find it after trips to several dispensaries, even though all of these places had the edible I wanted listed on their website. Why is it so hard to find my favorite pot products? It’s like that with vape cartridges and drinks, too.
J.
Ellementa, a startup dedicated to building a network for women interested in cannabis wellness, just started its Denver chapter in June, but already its Mile High meetings are as comfortable — and energizing — as a coffee klatsch.
On July 12, a dozen women gathered in a room at the uber-hip Galvanize building at 1644 Platte Street for a conversation about cannabis led by Ellementa Denver organizer Ashley Kingsley. Ellementa got its start in Alaska; Denver was its first branch, and it now has one in Chicago. “There was nowhere women could go and talk intimately about cannabis,” Kingsley says. There were places they could go to talk business, of course, but not about more intimate details, she notes.
Is there a fast-forward option for the rest of July? I’ve been waking up with a sweaty back every morning for three weeks now. I understand that our trash cans aren’t melting and our airports aren’t being shut down, as they are in Arizona, but we’re not used to this shit.
Getting motivated to play outside like you once did during the summer gets harder as the years go by, especially when it’s 90 degrees out in the morning. These eight sativas might not lower your body temperature, but they’ll chill your mind enough to stop worrying about those musty britches you’ve been walking around in all day.
Brewbudz, a line of cannabis-infused K-cups in development for over a year, has finally landed in marijuana dispensaries. Unfortunately for wake-and-bakers in Colorado, all of those dispensaries are in Nevada – but not for long.
The edibles brand debuted in Nevada today during that state’s first fortnight of recreational sales, but according to one of the company’s directors, Brewbudz is in the process of securing a manufacturer in Colorado and should be in dispensaries here a few months after. Will it be worth the wait?
Dear out-of-state performers who are scheduled to visit Colorado,
Listen, Coloradans understand getting too fucked up on pot to function. After all, marijuana in some form has been legal in this state for seventeen — seventeen! — years, giving us ample opportunity to experiment (and fail) with dosage. And we’re used to seeing our parents or friends visiting from out of state eat too much of a brownie or take one too many rips of a bong and suffer through the weirds.