Browsing: Busted

Fourth-generation farmer Randy Taylor has watched potential income disappear as a hailstorm obliterated plants on the 7,000 acres that he oversees. But having to destroy crops himself is a tougher pill to swallow.

In December, on what he calls “probably some of the hardest days in my life,” Taylor mowed down eighty acres of hemp that had spiked THC levels. The Colorado Department of Agriculture had told the Yuma farmer that his hemp was too hot, above the 0.3 percent THC limit that defines industrial hemp under state law. Taylor’s crop measured at 0.47 percent THC, over the limit by just 0.17 percent.

Around noon on November 20, 2017, mere hours after Denver Environmental Health announced a ban on the sale of kratom for human consumption in the city, DEH representatives stormed into the 5800 East Colfax Avenue branch of Myxed Up Creations, which had been selling the popular herbal pain reliever, and ordered stock valued in the thousands of dollars to be destroyed on the spot. Michael Gross, the shop’s attorney, who likened the action to “a commando raid,” managed to prevent the supply from being trashed, and now the Denver agency’s own board is allowing the kratom in question to be transferred to Myxed Up’s sister stores outside the city limits after criticizing the way the matter was handled. But as many as fourteen other businesses in Denver weren’t so lucky.

Upon learning that Denver Broncos receiver Carlos Henderson was arrested yesterday, January 14, on a marijuana charge, most NFL fans are likely to assume that such busts are common for members of the team, given Colorado’s reputation as a cannabis mecca. But, no: According to a comprehensive database of NFL players in trouble, Henderson is the first Bronco in more than seventeen years to be taken into custody for an alleged weed violation.

As we’ve reported, George Brauchler, 18th Judicial District DA and candidate for Colorado Attorney General, opposed Amendment 64, the 2012 measure that legalized limited recreational marijuana sales in the state, and he doesn’t think its passage has done anything to eliminate violent crime associated with pot. As AG, however, Brauchler says he would defend the state’s cannabis laws against threats from the likes of Attorney General Jeff Sessions while at the same time using a new strategy to attack the proliferation of illegal grows across Colorado, many of them allegedly associated with foreign drug cartels.

In “Mailing Marijuana Out of Colorado: How Likely Are You to Get Caught?,” published circa November 2015, the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area’s Tom Gorman estimated that 90 percent of illegally shipped cannabis packages weren’t being found by postal inspectors.

More than two years later, figures from a pair of recent analyses maintain that hundreds more pot-packed parcels are being intercepted than in previous years, even as our Ask a Stoner columnist suggests that successfully mailing pot edibles out of state is still a snap if proper precautions are taken.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announcement about rescinding the Cole memo, an Obama-era Department of Justice document that provided some legal protections for businesses operating in states that allow and regulate cannabis sales, has shaken the marijuana industry in Colorado and beyond. But Justin Strekal, political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), isn’t surprised by this action. As we noted last July, Strekal believes an op-ed from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enumerating eleven ways the administration of President Donald Trump can kill legal cannabis is being used by Sessions and company as a crackdown guideline, and junking Cole is fifth on the list

Retail cannabis industries across the country are reeling after United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo rescinding the Cole Memorandum, a 2013 policy that offered protection from federal prosecution for the cultivation, distribution and possession of pot in states where it is legal. In Colorado, the first state to authorize the legal sale of retail cannabis, the response has been quick…and, in many cases, furious