What’s better than getting your honey a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day? Getting cannabis chocolates for your honey on Valentine’s Day. Here’s our rundown of some of the best chocolates in town, via Instagram:
Coloradans are known for our commitment to sustainable practices and organic products, but California’s OJAI Energetics is the first company in the hemp space to get certification as a B Corporation — a designation for businesses that are leaders of global movements and use their work as a force for good.
This week, the Colorado Department of Human Services, in conjunction with Governor John Hickenlooper’s office, formally requested that the General Assembly allocate more than $6 million annually from the state’s marijuana-tax cash fund for a new program that would offer help to chronic drug users as opposed to criminalizing them. Art Way, senior director for criminal-justice reform and Colorado director with the national Drug Policy Alliance, which worked closely with state agencies in crafting the proposal (it’s on view below), sees the impact of this approach as potentially revolutionary for those struggling with addictions to heroin and other heavy narcotics.
If approved, Way says, “marijuana tax revenue and marijuana legalization will fund broader drug-policy purposes and drug-policy concerns that have long had more of an impact on society, both from a human perspective and a fiscal perspective. We’re talking about other substances on which users become truly dependent, and people who are on the chaotic end of the use spectrum. So for marijuana legalization to fund this is a game-changer.”
The final numbers for 2016 will soon be released by the Colorado Department of Revenue; in the meantime, we did a deep dive into stats from the Marijuana Enforcement Division for the first six months of last year, and they reflect what we already knew: Cannabis cultivation and sales are on the rise.
Between January and June of 2016, Colorado issued 9,098 more medical licenses and 6,935 more retail licenses. In all, 16,033 licenses were added; that total covers retail and medical stores, cultivation facilities, product-manufacturing facilities and testing facilities. Retail manufacturing facilities alone rose by 15 percent from 2015.
At the second meeting of Denver’s social consumption advisory council, members addressed multiple issues, including a few carried over from last month. Here’s a rundown of the top ten topics at the February 8 gathering:
Update below: The confirmation of Jeff Sessions as attorney general in the administration of President Donald Trump was touted by Senator Cory Gardner, who voted to confirm the former Alabama senator shortly after doing likewise for new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — a donor, along with her family, of nearly $50,000 to the Colorado Republican. But the news isn’t being cheered by Colorado’s other senator, Democrat Michael Bennet, or marijuana-industry representatives fearful that Sessions, a vocal pot hater, will soon order a crackdown on cannabis sales in Colorado and beyond.
After Sessions was confirmed by a 52-47 margin, Gardner released the following statement: “Mr. Sessions has an impressive legal career and a profound commitment to upholding the rule of law. I’ve had the opportunity to work with him in the Senate and witness firsthand his strong record of bipartisanship. I’m confident in his ability to serve as the chief law enforcement officer in the country.”
It took over a week for the city to count the votes, but on November 15, Denver officials finally announced that voters had approved Initiative 300, which allows the social consumption of marijuana in the city. Three days later, however, Colorado’s Liquor Enforcement Division (LED) adopted a new rule that prohibits any business with a liquor license from also applying for a social-consumption license.
On February 3, five plaintiffs — including Emmett Reistroffer and Kayvan Khalatbari — filed suit against the state over that rule.
Being late to the party sucks. I just saw Anderson .Paak absolutely kill it at Red Rocks and wanted to smack myself for not listening to him sooner, as so many friends told me to do. Fortunately, I can catch up on all his music now — and with any luck, I can catch up on smoking SAGE while I’m listening to it.
I’d seen SAGE dozens of times in grows and dispensaries, but always thought of the peppery spice associated with the herb (not that kind of herb), which isn’t a cannabis flavor I enjoy. A hybrid — but more like a collision — of landrace indica Afghani and Haze, a classic sativa (there are some varieties of SAGE with Afghani and Big Sir Holy genetics), SAGE actually stands for Sativa Afghani Genetic Equilibrium. The spacey name is derived from the funky head high the two powerful but essentially opposite strains produce.
In states like Colorado, where the recreational use of cannabis is legal, the population is divided into two categories: those who use marijuana, and everyone else. LucidMood, a Boulder-based company, is hoping to bridge that gap with a product it bills as “cannabis for the rest of us.”
Charles Jones, a cognitive scientist, started Chooze, the company behind LucidMood, after a friend called to ask whether smoking marijuana would affect her son’s IQ. He started researching cannabis on her behalf.
The February 1 press conference about the arrest of Joshua Cummings in the execution-style killing of RTD security officer Scott Von Lanken took place on an upper level of the Denver Police Department administration building. Afterward, I rode an elevator toward the ground floor with DPD public-information officer Doug Schepman and another man. As we descended, the man asked, “Do the elevators here always smell like weed?”
Schepman laughed. “Some days are worse than others,” he said.