Four more states legalized recreational marijuana in November, but implementing those new programs may not go smoothly. Nevada is one of those states: Medical marijuana has been legal there since 2000, and last week the state website accidentally leaked personal information on nearly 12,000 people who have applied for medical dispensary licenses.
Applications are eight pages long and include detailed information about applicants, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, full addresses and physical details such as weight, height and eye and hair color.
Denver’s cannabis calendar is filling up this month. Whether you’d like to meet with other ganjapreners, learn more about how to market your business or get a job in the industry, you’ll find plenty of opportunities in January. Here’s the rundown:
Ignorance of the law — and election news — wasn’t a valid excuse for an aging Arizona toker arrested this week in Golden Valley.
After allegedly resisting arrest, Lon Victor Post, 54, told deputies early Wednesday morning that he thought the state had legalized marijuana, according to the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office.
Vicente Sederberg, Colorado’s first law firm to focus on marijuana, is expanding. Two of the firm’s partners were involved in crafting Amendment 64, the proposal to legalize recreational marijuana that Colorado voters approved in 2012, and the firm also had a hand in writing Denver’s social-use initiative, I-300, which was on the ballot this past November.
The firm represents all things cannabis, handling businesses and investors, while also providing corporate representation, offering full-service licensing and compliance departments, and dealing with real estate and legislative policies. And now it’s adding a hemp practice.
Dear Stoner: I think pot will help my grandfather’s arthritis. Is there a kind of pot product — flower, edible, whatever — you’d recommend?
Scott
Dear Scott: According to science, you’re probably right. A study by the University of Oxford showed that cannabis-based medicine administered orally helped reduce rheumatoid arthritis pain and disease activity for the large majority of those studied. Big surprise, right? But researchers from the National Academy of Sciences took it a step further and studied the effects of CBD (cannabidiol, the non-psychoactive part of cannabis) on cows and mice with arthritis, concluding that “the treatment effectively blocked progression of arthritis” in both animals, protecting the joints against further damage. So get your grandpa some CBD products.
In November, Massachusetts voters approved recreational marijuana; that state was supposed to start legal sales in January 2018 — but now that date has been pushed back at least six months.
Personal possession, use and cultivation of cannabis became legal in Massachusetts on December 15, but last week state lawmakers voted to push back the licensing of any recreational stores until July 1, 2018.
This means that while possession in Massachusetts is legal, the sale of marijuana won’t be for at least eighteen months.
Our readers decided that marijuana, homelessness, JonBenét Ramsey and boobs were among 2016’s most fascinating topics. With a Trump presidency on the horizon, here’s betting 2017 will be even more interesting.
Keep reading for ten of our most popular news stories of the year:
All year we’ve kept you up to date on all things weed, both here in Colorado and as legalization sweeps the nation.
Here are the stories you were most excited to read.
This year, Colorado proved just how profitable marijuana can be.
In the first ten months of 2016, Colorado topped $1 billion in marijuana sales, according to the Department of Revenue. By the end of October, the state had racked up $1.1 billion in legal sales of medical and recreational marijuana — a number that easily topped the $996 million in revenue reported in 2015.
Many of the issues that dominated local headlines in 2015, including homelessness, the rising cost of housing and a steady influx of transplants, continued to be hot topics this year. But from an unpredictable, insane election to the media frenzy over the twentieth anniversary of JonBenét Ramsey’s death, 2016 threw out plenty of curveballs.