Fox News, which has a history of portraying Colorado pot smokers as apathetic morons, recently ran a piece suggesting that the Western Slope community of Durango has been overtaken by panhandlers in the wake of recreational cannabis legalization. The head of a business organization that created a Facebook video ripping the article as false says the Fox News reporter with whom he spoke seemed disinterested in any information that contradicted his conclusion that weed had put the town on the fast road to hell even though the supposed link between homelessness and cannabis has been widely discredited.
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Most users consider marijuana addiction a myth, but Colorado State University’s psychology department takes it seriously…so much so that it’s focusing on marijuana in its new master’s program on addiction counseling.
“Historically speaking, people thought you couldn’t get addicted to marijuana. We know that’s not true in the scientific community, but that hasn’t penetrated public opinion yet,” says Bradley Conner, associate professor and director of addiction counseling at CSU.
According to Conner, a shortage of certified addiction specialists and a rise in drug addiction have created a gap in accessible treatment. With his team’s undergraduate and master’s programs at CSU, he hopes to fill that void while teaching students counseling methods tailored for marijuana abusers. That’s something that hasn’t been covered enough since Colorado’s legalized marijuana industry started in 2014, Conner adds.
As our Ask a Stoner columnist noted this week, flying with marijuana is still not okay despite a TSA glitch that briefly suggested otherwise. But a new survey suggests that it’s happening a lot anyway. The report from MissTravel.com, which calls itself “the world’s first travel dating website,” shows that more than half the respondents have taken cannabis with them on a domestic flight. But that number tumbles for people traveling internationally.
Flying with marijuana has long been a hot topic among Westword readers. But the subject flared up nationally earlier this month, when the Marijuana Majority’s Tom Angell, a frequent interviewee in this space, tweeted the following: “Trump TSA marks marijuana as less restrictive on planes than alcohol over 140 proof, bottled water, corkscrews & recreational oxygen.”
A new study on marijuana use and attitudes toward legalization was released earlier this week — just in time for 4/20. During the first week of March, the Marist Poll conducted the Weed & the American Family survey, funded by Yahoo News and focusing on the impact of marijuana use on relationships and the family.
The survey found that more than half of the adults in America have tried marijuana at least once in their lives. Nearly 55 million people in this country currently use marijuana; 35 million consume monthly, 20 million consume yearly, and 78 million have tried it but aren’t using it right now. That adds up to 22 percent of Americans using marijuana, and 63 percent of those using marijuana regularly. Of the respondents who are users, 54 percent are parents and 30 percent are parents with children younger than 18.
For most users, it’s a social activity; 88 percent of the respondents say they consume with their close friends. The survey also determined that there are almost as many marijuana users in the U.S. as there are cigarette smokers.
Update: After the publication of this post, Scott Pack provided us with additional information that’s intended to show he did nothing to defraud the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against him and acted in a manner that was completely legal and ethical. See it below, following our previous coverage.
Original post: Attorney Matthew Buck has filed a lawsuit in what he calls “the largest fraud case in the history of Colorado’s marijuana industry.” This contention is rejected by Scott Pack, the entrepreneur at the center of it.
No criminal charges have been pressed against Pack at this writing. But in the complaint, on view below, Buck’s clients, Pierre and Christophe Raygot, claim to have been bilked out of $500,000 by Pack and Rudy Saenz, the latter of whom was among sixteen people indicted last month in what prosecutors describe as a massive operation that grew marijuana for distribution outside Colorado. And Buck maintains that seventeen additional investors were also taken by Pack and Saenz; he estimates the total losses at more than $5.3 million.
“We’ve never seen anything close to this” in the Colorado cannabis business, Buck says. “I’ve never seen investments this great fail, let alone fraud on this scale. And our law firm” — Corry & Associates — “has been doing this for seventeen years,” since the approval, in the year 2000, of Amendment 20, which legalized medical marijuana in the state.
Our calendar is getting loaded for 4/20. Alongside more now-traditional events, such as the 420 Rally at Civic Center Park and Snoop Dogg’s annual Wellness Retreat show, there are some new ones on the roster, including a spring dinner put on by the Mason Jar Event Group, its first in the Mile High City.
Mason Jar is the “high society” organizer of the most coveted cannabis pairing dinners around. Think sun-soaked tables where Top Chef-worthy food is passed around along with joints, bongs and vaporizers; where the cannabis-industry elite, who appear the exact opposite of stoner stereotypes, thrive inside their own bubble.
4/20 has been a sacred holiday since the ’70s, and with Colorado leading the way on recreational legalization, Denver has become ground zero for the celebration. Whether it’s your first time in town for the big day or you’re a veteran, here are some tips on how to survive 4/20 at Civic Center Park and beyond:
1. Don’t carry more than an ounce
When you leave for the day, make sure you’re carrying no more than the legal amount of marijuana. If you’re planning to stop by a dispensary during the day, carry less than the legal amount so you don’t go over. In Colorado, it’s legal for adults 21 and up to possess one ounce of THC — flower, concentrates, edibles, whatever. Just make sure the total amount of THC does not go over one ounce.
Tomorrow, April 20, the latest edition of the Denver 4/20 Rally will hit Civic Center Park. The event, which gets under way at 10 a.m., is expected to draw approximately 50,000 people, and there’ll be plenty of food and music courtesy of DJs, local hip-hop groups and headliner 2 Chainz, who’ll emcee the annual 4:20 p.m. countdown. But what do attendees really need to know? We asked Miguel Lopez, the man behind the bash. Here’s his personal Denver 4/20 Rally top ten.
“Some people are very lucky — everything they touch works for them,” laments Steve Horwitz, owner of Ganja Gourmet. “But for whatever reason, ever since I opened this business I’ve had a black cloud around me. Pretty much nothing has worked the way it should have or could have.”
Horwitz, a seasoned salesman in his fifties with a hearty Long Island accent and a gold chain around his neck, doesn’t take no for an answer, though; he just shifts his approach and tries again. Over the past eight years — the period during which the marijuana industry exploded in Denver — he’s changed his business model four times. He opened Ganja Gourmet at 1810 South Broadway in late 2009 as a medical marijuana restaurant (and one of the first spots William Breathes reviewed), turned it into a takeout joint in 2010, transformed it into a medical dispensary in 2011, then changed it into a medical/recreational store in 2015. Now, to keep up with the times, Horwitz is gearing up to stamp his candy logo on wholesale edibles and partner with a smoke room once social consumption is allowed.
Colorado has been a 4/20 destination for more than a decade, and the allure of tax dollars helped spur a legalization movement that now brings tens of millions of consumer dollars into the state every April.
Data from the Colorado Department of Revenue shows that Colorado made $2.49 million from the state’s 2.9 percent marijuana sales tax in March 2016. (That includes medical and recreational dispensaries and doesn’t count the 10 percent retail marijuana tax and other local taxes specific to cities and counties.) In May 2016, Colorado made $2.76 million from the same tax. But in April 2016, that tax total was significantly higher than in the preceding and following months: $3.29 million. Dispensary sales aren’t just rising in April; they’re rising annually, at an extremely fast rate.