Florida’s mostly Republican legislators can barely pass basic laws like tax cuts or budget plans without tripping over themselves or spiraling into intra-party screaming matches. They’re so bad at writing their own laws that, as the Miami Herald astutely pointed out last week, gigantic companies like Florida Power & Light have to write laws for them. The current Legislature is a Stygian pit of bad ideas.
So, naturally, Florida voters in 2016 chose to give all of those people drugs.
Did you know that we’ve learned more about space than we have about cannabis? I totally just made that up, but the point remains: There are too many uncharted strains out there. We come across a new species of pot much more often than an astronomer discovers some black hole, and the origins of some of these strains are just as dark. So it’s always nice to come across something new whose origins are relatively easy to trace, especially when the strain is as bomb as Grapefruit Durban.
I stumbled on Grapefruit Durban almost two years ago. It’s been around town since at least late 2014 and seems to be a Colorado-only strain on the commercial side, as there is little information about it online other than its infrequent appearances on a few Denver menus. With such a straightforward name, though, the strain’s genetics are easy to determine.
For the uninitiated, Grapefruit Durban is bred from Grapefruit and Durban Poison strains — two of my favorite sativas, thanks to the instant energy they bring. Grapefruit, bred from Cinderella 99 and an unknown auto-flowering sativa, is beloved for its heavy citrus, tropical aromas and relatively easy growing process. Durban Poison, a landrace sativa I write about often, is one of Colorado’s most popular, with a sweet, skunky flavor and intense head high.
If you want to keep a marijuana meeting going smoothly, don’t mention Reefer Madness.
The second-to-last meeting of Denver’s Social Consumption Advisory Committee took an interesting turn on March 24 when Dan Landes, the group’s business representative and owner of City, O’ City and the soon-to-reopen Campus Lounge, used that term — and offended some members of the committee.
Concerned that the committee was making requirements for social-use applications too complicated, Landes said he was worried that many small businesses would be barred from applying. “I wonder when everybody imagines what this marijuana social consumption area looks like, what they have in their head?” Landes asked. Most of the people he’d heard from — either personally or when they reached out to the committee — with ideas about implementing social consumption under the provisions of Initiative 300 are not bar owners or coffee shop proprietors, Landes pointed out; they’re entrepreneurs hoping to add cannabis into an already established business or recreational activity.
Dear Stoner: I’ve seen some dispensaries that have rooms for only medical customers, some for only recreational customers and some that sell to both. It seems inefficient, so why all the separation?
Joey
Dear Joey: Yes, it does seem inefficient when you see the exact same products on both sides. But when recreational marijuana became legal in this state, the law called for separating medical patients from retail customers.
As a result, any pot shop that sells to both medical and recreational crowds needs to have licenses for each, and to keep those licenses, it needs to have separate medical and retail marijuana inventory, tracking and customers. If a bud room only has one point-of-sale system, then only one of the consumer demographics can be served. While some dispensaries prefer individual rooms for each side in order to ensure privacy, others will install two POS systems in a bud room and simply split it in half with an imaginary line or rope.
Dezy Saint-Nolde, better known by her activism name, Queen Phoenix, has emerged as a prominent organizer of protests and demonstrations in recent months. These included the thousands-strong November 10 protest against Donald Trump’s election, the February 18 Defend our Constitution march, a health-care rally on February 25, and a Demand Russia-Trump Ties Investigation march on March 18.
But Phoenix also believes that her activism made her the target of an undercover Denver Police Department investigation in which she was arrested and charged for offenses related to marijuana.
In a January cover story in Westword concerning DPD’s social-media surveillance and how it related to the department’s old “Spy Files” program, Phoenix shared her experience of having her house raided by cops in December on charges that she was distributing marijuana without a license.
Veterans in Colorado’s cannabis industry are the new kids on the block for 4/20.
Since there’s no High Times event on April 20 in Colorado this year, local companies are coming together to create their own 4/20 commemoration that will be representative of the state’s marijuana industry. The Green Solution, The Hemp Connoisseur (THC) magazine, incredibles and New Earth Muziq are partnering to host 420 on the Block in the 1000 to 1200 blocks of Broadway on Thursday, April 20.
“We want to take 4/20 back,” says Nick Callaio, marketing and events director for the Green Solution. “High Times didn’t have to jump through all those hoops…we had to jump through all those hoops.”
Dear Stoner: I’ve seen some dispensaries that have rooms for only medical customers, some for only recreational customers and some that sell to both. It seems inefficient, so why all the separation?
Joey
Dear Joey: Yes, it does seem inefficient when you see the exact same products on both sides. But when recreational marijuana became legal in this state, the law called for separating medical patients from retail customers.
As a result, any pot shop that sells to both medical and recreational crowds needs to have licenses for each, and to keep those licenses, it needs to have separate medical and retail marijuana inventory, tracking and customers. If a bud room only has one point-of-sale system, then only one of the consumer demographics can be served. While some dispensaries prefer individual rooms for each side in order to ensure privacy, others will install two POS systems in a bud room and simply split it in half with an imaginary line or rope.
Thornton is finally getting a recreational dispensary. On March 23, the Thornton City Council approved a license for its first retail pot store, but not without some hesitation from councilmembers.
The Marijuana Local Licensing Authority had convened a meeting with Mayor Heidi K. Williams and the council to hear testimony from each of the four dispensaries requesting a license from the city, which had previously had a moratorium on recreational marijuana. That ban was lifted last August, and the applicants all came armed with community-engagement plans to explain what each business would bring to the town.
The evening began with a PowerPoint presentation by Rocky Road Remedies, outlining a $12,000 restorative-justice program the company would like to introduce in schools. After that, Stephanie Hull, director of operations for Rocky Road, was questioned for over an hour by councilmembers.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has awarded a Schedule II classification for a cannabis solution.
Cannabis itself is classified under Schedule I, the same classification as heroin, and marijuana advocates have long hoped that the DEA would lessen the drug’s classification to a Schedule II. While Schedule II substances still have a high potential for abuse, dependence and addiction, there are fewer restrictions on research — an area in which cannabis and marijuana products have encountered many roadblocks.
The pharmaceutical drug company Insys waited two years for the approval of Syndros, an oral remedy containing THC; this week the DEA finally gave the okay. Syndros is approved to treat nausea and vomiting, which many cancer patients suffer during chemotherapy.
What can $3.5 million in funding get you? The top slot as the most venture-capitalist-backed company in the cannabis industry.
Last week, Baker, a marketing-automation platform, announced that it had secured a $1.6 million extension to its August 2016 seed round — bringing its total raised capital to $3.5 million. The company’s software connects dispensary owners with customers throughout every touchpoint, from online ordering to in-store check-in and interactive shopping menus. Last year, Baker helped more than 250 dispensaries collect a total of $3.1 million in revenue.