With medical-marijuana dispensaries becoming a growth industry in Colorado, nearly half of the state's voters say all pot should be legalized and taxed, according to a statewide poll by Rasmussen Reports.
According to the telephone survey of 500 likely Colorado voters, 49 percent believe that marijuana should be legalized and taxed, while 39 percent disagree and 13 percent are undecided.
Colorado men are far more supportive than women of the idea of turning marijuana into a taxed product, and Democrats and independents view the idea more favorably than Republicans, Rasmussen found.
In a similar survey conducted nationwide a year ago, Rasmussen found that 41 percent of voters supported legalizing and taxing marijuana. Read more »
The Grand Hyatt Denver will be hopping this Saturday, as folks gather to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, the local drug-policy reform organization better known as SAFER. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, Denver City Councilman Chris Nevitt, and columnist and morning show host David Sirota are scheduled to be on hand, along with marijuana activists who'll celebrate all the successes they've achieved in Colorado.
The movement has come a long way since the organization's humble beginnings in 2005, says SAFER Executive Director Mason Tvert. That's when the venerable Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project sent Tvert, a recent college graduate from Virginia, out West to launch a campaign with a simple yet innovative message: Marijuana is safer than alcohol. Colorado seemed like the perfect place to do so, he recalls, especially since college campuses here were still reeling from a series of alcohol-related controversies. Read more »
Yesterday, a last-ditch effort by Republican lawmakers to derail HB 1284, a bill to regulate the medical marijuana industry, by pushing MMJ questions to the November ballot failed. That means the legislation is expected to reach the senate floor this week -- yet Senator Chris Romer is still interested in tweaking it.
Apparently, Romer doesn't agree -- because early this morning, he sent out an e-mail to Michael Dohr from the state's Office of Legislative Legal Services featuring another batch of alterations. Here they are:
Michael and other interested parties,
We need to split the Amendment and need a few more. I think this is it. I hope/think Spense, Massey, McCann, Sommers and I can support these. Please let me know time is short.
Forget Hippie Hill. For thoroughly modern marijuana smokers in the San Francisco Bay area, the hip place to celebrate their movement's high holiday this year was the inside of a stretch Hummer parked outside a pot gardening superstore.
It was one of the more unusual places where marijuana legalization advocates lit up across the country during the annual observance of 4/20, the celebration-cum-mass civil disobedience derived from "420" — insider shorthand for cannabis consumption. Read more »
Medical-marijuana advocates scored another win Monday at the state Capitol when a legislative panel approved a bill creating new dispensary regulations after making several industry-friendly changes.
A divided House Judiciary Committee removed a provision that would have allowed local governments to ban dispensaries in their communities. The committee also voted to allow consumption of marijuana-infused products at dispensaries, lower the amount of marijuana a dispensary would have to grow itself, eliminate a cap on the number of patients a dispensary could serve and loosen the rules for past criminal violations that could automatically disqualify someone from owning a dispensary. Read more »
Law "entirely symbolic," but Boulder County DA says he's paying attention to public sentiment
By. Erica Meltzer
Nederland became the second municipality in Colorado to legalize marijuana within its borders on Tuesday night.
The mountain town's residents went further than Breckinridge, which last year legalized possession of less than one ounce of marijuana, and by a vote of 259 to 218, removed all criminal penalties against buying, selling, possessing, consuming, growing and transporting marijuana for anyone age 21 or older.
Nederland voters also chose Trustee Sumaya Abu-Haidar to replace incumbent Mayor Martin Cheshes, making Cheshes the fourth mayor in a row to not win re-election.
Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration's top agent in Colorado, said Monday there must be "aggravating factors" before he would raid businesses involved in the state's medical-marijuana industry.
Sweetin said medical-marijuana growers and dispensaries operating within the limits of state law are not ordinarily worth his agents' time. Because of that, there have been instances when DEA agents have taken no action against marijuana-growing operations after an initial investigation, Sweetin said.
While Michigan voters approved the legalization of medical marijuana in 2008, California voters will decide in November whether to fully legalize and tax the drug.
Mark Binelli reported on the movement for Rolling Stone's April issue, using Detroit as an example of marijuana's potential economic impact.
"From California to downtown Detroit, there's a green revolution sweeping across the nation -- and it's changing the weed business forever," Binelli wrote.
On a wall inside Frank Quattrone's office hangs a framed white sheet of paper.
It's nothing fancy, just a few printed words and numbers, with a faint official seal in the background.
What it represents, though, is more remarkable. Quattrone's business, Pure Medical Dispensary, is one of the first stores in Denver history to be specially licensed to sell marijuana, and that piece of paper proves it.
"It didn't look like I expected it to look," Quattrone said of the license, which arrived last week after weeks of negotiating city hall bureaucracy. "It didn't have any bling to it."
Soon after, the department announced that it is changing the way it handles applications from medical marijuana patients, acknowledging that it's so swamped with paperwork that people are now waiting up to six months for their cards, when the process used to take a few weeks.
Welcome to WhyProhibition.ca. We are working to repeal the prohibition of cannabis by organizing and educating the public. Sign up to get activism alerts, and access to organizing tools.
By Mark Harden, Denver Business Journal
By Joel Warner
By 
By. CBS Denver
By John Ingold, The Denver Post
Law "entirely symbolic," but Boulder County DA says he's paying attention to public sentiment
By 
By John Ingold 
By Patricia Calhoun
