When Windy Borman started making her documentary on women in the cannabis industry in 2015, women held 36 percent of its senior leadership roles, compared to 22 percent across all industries in the United States. But by the time her film, Mary Janes: The Women of Weed premiered at the Alamo Drafthouse in Littleton March 3 to a sold-out crowd, the latest news showed that that statistic had dipped nine points, to 27 percent.
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After years of gaining little ground in Colorado, social cannabis consumption is finally making progress. On the same day a bill was introduced in the Colorado Legislature that would allow dispensary tasting rooms, and less than a week after a members-only pot lounge successfully opened in RiNo, the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses approved the Coffee Joint’s Cannabis Consumption Establishment license — making it the first establishment to ever hold a pot consumption license in Denver.
Windy Borman grew up during the height of the DARE era in the ’80s and ‘90s. She never smoked cannabis, which she knew as a gateway drug, because addiction ran in her family.
But Borman, 37, moved to Colorado for a job in 2014, the same year recreational pot was legalized. She had produced and directed films on topics such as elephants that stepped on landmines and learning disabilities, but she found a new subject in her new home: women in the cannabis industry.
Commercial cannabis is legal within Colorado state lines, but things are different outside of our pot bubble. And now two conservative organizations are joining forces to burst that bubble, while warning other states of what they believe has been a big mistake.
Welcome to 2018, when distinguished political reporters are jumping ship to report on pot. Run by longtime political reporter Peter Marcus, just-launched website TheNewsStation.com is striving to be the intersection between pot and politics while also shedding light on daily developments in the cannabis industry as a whole.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — but in 2018, imitation can also be simple mockery. Count a Denver dispensary chain’s decision to name a marijuana strain after United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions among the latter.
I desperately tried to tiptoe around the flu bug that just swept through Denver, popping vitamin C and obsessively washing my hands for weeks. Didn’t matter. Within twelve hours of feeling a tickle in my throat, fluids were exiting my body as though I were a Civil War soldier stricken with dysentery. And after finally breaking through a weeklong Nyquil haze, I was ready for some cannabinoid relief — an indica, to be specific.
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.
New sales revenue data from the Colorado Department of Revenue shows that the state’s legal cannabis industry collected over $1.5 billion in 2017 and accounted for nearly $4.5 billion in sales since recreational stores first opened on January 1, 2014.
At this writing, thirty states and the District of Columbia have legalized some form of marijuana, be it recreational, medical or both, with Colorado having been in the latter category for more than four years. Nonetheless, Facebook and Instagram continue to make it difficult for cannabis businesses to advertise and promote themselves on the platforms. The scenario causes frustration within the industry even as it forces marketers to come up with clever ways to get around restrictions.