Home growers in Parker won’t have to limit their grows to twelve plants — at least not yet.

On Monday, October 3, the Parker Town Council decided to hold off on a pair of proposed ordinances that would limit the size of both an indoor growing space and the number of plants there, regardless of whether the plants are for medical or recreational use. 

Cannabis and music have always gone hand in hand, but even since Colorado legalized recreational pot use in 2012 with Amendment 64, it is still illegal to consume cannabis in public and in private businesses that are accessed by the public – including concert venues.

This November, voters in Denver will have the opportunity to address the issue with Ballot Question 300, which, if passed, will create a pilot program that allows limited social cannabis consumption in permitted private establishments.

The largest comprehensive study of marijuana users is under way. BDS Analytics is working on the industry’s first scientifically rigorous consumer-research survey about cannabis consumption. Headed by Linda Gilbert, a market research veteran, the team is conducting a nationwide survey of 1,000 people in every state who are deemed demographically representative.

“Everyone in the business has common questions, but nobody has any answers,” Gilbert says. “We want to understand not just where consumers are right now at this point in time, but where have they been, and where they seem to be headed. This is not an advocacy study. We want to understand the general marketplace.”

Aurora’s Mayflower Farms is one of the largest grow operations in the state, and it’s getting even bigger. In November, Mayflower will add an extraction lab for concentrates as well as a kitchen at its facility; in the new year, it will open its own retail store.

In February 2015, the new cannabis company took over an old Mayflower Moving warehouse (hence the name) and started overhauling the place; it had plants in the ground eleven months later, says CEO Bruce Douglass. It currently has five rooms totaling about 3,000 square feet devoted to growing flower, and has gone through eight harvests since January. Each harvest garners about 100 pounds of product. Today Mayflower has 3,600 plants in its facility, but come November it will up that to 6,000.

President Michele Ross (far left) and co-founder Melanie Rodgers (far right) stand with scientists and doctors on IMPACT Network’s advisory board.

Scientists are coming out of the woodwork in support of medical marijuana — and the Drug Policy Alliance is standing by them, putting its money where their mouths are.

To support marijuana research, the Denver-based IMPACT Network recently started a program called Scientists for Legalization. Twenty-five scientists have joined so far, and they’re asking the government to fund cannabis research at the state and national levels. They’re also asking that researchers who study marijuana have protection.

The 420 Games, an annual 4.2-mile race for marijuana enthusiasts, began two years ago in San Francisco. By year two, attendance had grown by 300 percent, and CEO Jim McAlpine decided to expand the run to seven cities along the West Coast, with plans for further growth. “We’re going fully national,” he says. “From New York to California and everywhere in between.”

That “in between” includes Boulder, where the Games will land at the Boulder Reservoir on Saturday, October 1.