Denver has come a step closer to allowing late-night dispensaries.

Under state law, dispensaries can stay open until midnight, as they do in Edgewater and Glendale. For the last several months, Denver City Council’s special marijuana committee has discussed extending those hours. At a meeting on April 3, councilmembers settled on 10 p.m. as a closing time, which mirrors Aurora rules, and moved the proposal to the full council.

A Denver City Council committee met on March 13 to consider a presentation by the Marijuana Industry Group, which made a case for extending the hours of operation for dispensaries in the city. If approved, dispensaries would be able to stay open until midnight instead of 7 p.m.

Every municipality in Colorado that allows recreational marijuana sales has later hours than Denver, according to Kristi Kelly, MIG’s executive director, who also serves on Denver’s Social Consumption Advisory Committee. Dispensaries in Boulder and Aurora are open until 10 p.m., and dispensaries in neighboring Edgewater and Glendale are open until midnight.

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:

Denver may not see the social use of marijuana as soon as some people would like.

On December 5, Denver City Council members met with representatives from the City Attorney’s Office and the Department of Excise and Licenses to discuss the process and timeline for implementation of Initiative 300, which Denver voters approved November 8. The city will have applications available by January 21 for businesses that want to apply for social-use licenses under I-300, but Ashley Kilroy, director of Excise and Licenses, warned that the city may not accept those applications for some time.

Last Thursday, the Department of Justice released a three-page memo announcing that the federal government will not prosecute Native Americans growing and selling marijuana on tribal lands, even in states where the drug is illegal. So will dispensaries become the new casinos?
Probably not. Many tribal leaders, including Executive Director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission Ron Andrade, found the announcement surprising and suspicious.