Hospitals and treatment centers in Colorado have seen an increase in marijuana use among patients since recreational pot became legal in January 2014, while weed-related arrests have predictably plummeted significantly, a report reveals.

While the author of an 147-page study released by the Colorado Department of Public Safety on Monday cautions that it's too soon to measure perfectly the impact of the state's first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana laws, statistics suggest that facilities have seen a surge with respect to patients who were hospitalized after consuming cannabis.

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A Report Is the State's First Try at Measuring Impact of Legalization.

Colorado's treatment centers have seen a trend toward heavier marijuana use among patients in the years after the state legalized the drug, according to a new report from the state Department of Public Safety.

The 143-page report released Monday is the state's first comprehensive attempt at measuring and tracking the consequences of legalization.

In 2014, more than a third of patients in treatment reported near-daily use of marijuana, according to the report. In 2007, less than a quarter of patients reported such frequency of use.

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We were somewhere north of Denver, not far from the pot farm, when my neighbor on the party bus pulled hard on his pipe and said: "Know what it is I love about this country? Everyone gets stoned."

He was a big, bearded fellow who had come up from his cattle ranch in Kansas, and though he didn't seem like the usual type for a cannabis foodie tour, I felt that he was right. After all, with us on the bus that afternoon was a Whitmanesque array of stoned Americans. There they were, puffing blunts beneath the blinking purple lights: a gay couple from Rhode Island, some multiethnic techies from Atlanta, a rowdy group of white dudes who'd just flown in from Houston for a bachelor party and a 60-year-old Boston mother with a beach house in the Hamptons. Everyone gets stoned.

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Illicit Pot Increasingly Is Being Grown in Homes and Shipped Out of State.

Authorities say organized crime elements with out-of-state ties increasingly are using Colorado homes to grow large amounts of marijuana illegally for transport and sale across the nation. About 30 locations, many of them homes, were targeted in raids on Thursday by authorities searching for illegal marijuana operations.

The uptick in these so-called "pirate grows" has become a priority for federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, who have dedicated resources to quashing the trend.

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Dear Stoner: I want to celebrate Denver's biggest unofficial holiday on 4/20. Do you have any advice?

Gone Ganja

Dear Ganja: Our day of gathering is upon us, but 4/20 in Denver has become much more than a simple day of heavy blazing now that Colorado's economy has gone green. While many of us will be enjoying a blunt bigger than Dikembe Mutombo's fingers, it's important to see through the dabs and kush smoke to celebrate responsibility and not forget what it took to get here - and how far we still have to go.

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"I wake up every day and I still can't believe I'm selling marijuana," Ieshia Jiron says, reflecting on the past year she's been working at Leaf on the Mesa, a medical and recreational dispensary in downtown Pueblo. She spent nearly two decades working at Target, then some time dabbling in real estate until some friends approached her to help get the new business off the ground.

"We were sitting on buckets then, but business really took off," she says. "It's been amazing."

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Schools in Colorado would be required to allow parents to provide medical marijuana treatment to their children on school grounds under a bill that won approval in a state legislative committee Monday.

House Bill 1373 gives school districts the authority to write policies limiting where on campus the treatment could take place or what forms of cannabis can be administered. If the district fails to create a policy, parents or private caregivers would have no limitations on where they could administer the treatment, said state Rep. Jonathan Singer, a Longmont Democrat who is the bill's sponsor.

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DENVER (AP) - Schools in Colorado would be forced to allow students to use medical pot under a bill that cleared its first hurdle Monday at the state Legislature.

The bill updates a new law that gives school districts the power to permit medical marijuana treatments for students under certain conditions. Patient advocates call the law useless because none of Colorado's 178 school districts currently allows such use.

The bill cleared a House committee Monday on a vote of 10 to 3 and now awaits a vote by the full House.

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It's time for Colorado to have a frank discussion about marijuana potency. In recent years, Colorado's marijuana has become a fundamentally different and harder drug, with unprecedented levels of THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient.

Nationally, the potency of marijuana has more than tripled since the mid-1990s, with the average at 12.6 percent THC in 2013, according to the National Drug Control Strategy.

But Colorado's post-legalization pot has reached even higher levels. Here, the average potency of marijuana flowers/buds is 17.1 percent THC and the average potency of concentrates is 62.1 percent THC, according to the Marijuana Equivalency in Portion and Dosage report, prepared for the Colorado Department of Revenue.

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Since 55 percent of Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, Colorado has experienced record economic growth, record tourism, and record job creation. In addition, Denver was recently named the best city to live in the United States by U.S. News and World Report based on factors such as quality of life, low crime rate, and job prospects.

The doomsday predictions of the prohibitionists never came to pass. Colorado is experiencing near record low traffic fatalities, and teen marijuana usage has remained relatively stagnant.

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But the Effort Will Have Additional Opportunities This Legislative Session.

Colorado lawmakers have rejected an initial effort to cap the potency of marijuana that customers can buy at recreational pot stores.

Rep. Kathleen Conti, R-Littleton, had proposed barring stores from selling marijuana and marijuana products - including concentrates - that contain more than 15 percent THC. That amount is below the average potency of products currently sold in recreational stores.

Late Wednesday, lawmakers on the House Finance Committee voted down the proposal on a 6-5 vote. But that decision may not be the end of the debate - for this year or for next.

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Things Looked Bleak When Oil Prices Dropped

DeBEQUE, Colo. - When the oil and gas industry tanked and plans for gambling fizzled out, this conservative town of ranchers and roughnecks found salvation in an unlikely place. Weed. "We are going to survive by it," said Darrel Kuhn, who owns the local liquor store, "because we sure as hell can't survive without it." Hemay be right. Colorado's billion-dollar marijuana industry has boosted the economies of many struggling towns. Empire, Trinidad and Parachute have all benefited from infusions of pot money.

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PUEBLO, Colo. - In the heart of territory run by the gang Los Carnales East Side Dukes - on a corner known as the Devil's Triangle - - a 14-year-old who describes himself as a "baby gangster" explained why he was trying to escape the crew.

"I really didn't want to end up six feet under," said Esai Torres, who joined the Dukes at 12, beating up rivals and following in the footsteps of his father, a leader on the streets.

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This is in regard to the editorial, "Stop overdose deaths" that ran in The Pueblo Chieftain on March 29.

Thanks for drawing attention to the opioid overdose antidote naloxone. It is absolutely crucial that Coloradans are able to obtain this lifesaving medication conveniently at pharmacies and community distribution programs throughout the state. These efforts have gained traction in recent years, but there's more work to do.

In cases of overdoses on opioids like prescription painkillers or heroin, the victim's breathing dangerously slows or stops. If they have naloxone on hand, peers, friends or loved ones who already are on the scene can be the most effective first responders.

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What is the cost of our indifference toward heroin use? Well, even though you may not be one, and all of your family and friends are not addicted, you may still die from this problem.

Follow the heroin addict and you will often find that he or she has shared his or her needle with someone else. You may think, "So what?"

That needle has just spread AIDS to another person.

"AIDS. I am not gay."

Follow the addict a little further. Now that this person has AIDS that person is more susceptible to new drug resistant diseases such as tuberculosis. This person circulates among us. Just one example of a problem you may not have known existed.

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Dear Stoner: I'm sick with a sore throat and can't smoke, but I have a hard time eating without cannabis. I also don't like most of the sweet edibles out there. Anything I can do?

Hazel

Dear Hazel: At least you have the no-smoking part down: Too many people are either careless or blind to what smoking can do to their throat and immune system when they have a cold or the flu. But not being able to eat can make you feel just as dreadful, and you can't beat an illness on an empty stomach. If brownies won't do it for you in the morning, look for pot-infused granola, muffins and other breakfast foods - they're definitely out there. Another option could be tinctures, which come in liquid form and are dropped under your tongue. Although tinctures don't last as long, they kick in quickly and will jump-start your appetite.

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Colorado Springs residents who voted for Amendment 64 were understandably disappointed to watch City Council opt out (as was permitted) a year later. That disappointment morphed into indignation as city officials repeatedly and methodically tightened marijuana regulations up to the brink of what's permitted by state constitutional amendments.

Now that indignation is manifesting as activism aimed at aligning city policy more closely with what most citizens want.

"I'll be honest, a month ago if you had asked me who the mayor was, I didn't know," says Anthony Robinson, aka Zip Floppyjoints, owner of the My Club 420 cannabis club. "But I've woken up."

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DENVER - One of Colorado's top marijuana businesses wants to keep the "high" in the Denver Broncos' Mile High Stadium.

Native Roots, which operates 14 medical and recreational dispensaries in Colorado, is prepared to make an offer for the naming rights of the NFL team's stadium, now called Sports Authority Field at Mile High.

"We may breathe green but we bleed orange," said Josh Ginsberg, CEO of Native Roots, in a press release. "Just like John Denver so memorably sang in 'Rocky Mountain High,' it only makes sense that the company which gains the new naming rights of Mile High be reflective of Colorado."

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DeBEQUE, Colo. - When the oil and gas industry tanked and plans for gambling crapped out, this conservative town of ranchers and roughnecks found salvation in an unlikely place. Weed. "We are going to survive by it," said Darrel Kuhn, who owns the local liquor store, "because we sure as hell can't survive without it." He may be right. Colorado's billion-dollar marijuana industry has boosted the economies of many struggling towns. Empire, Trinidad and Parachute have all benefited from infusions of pot money. But DeBeque, on Colorado's Western Slope, owes its very existence to the cannabis trade.

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Just north of the New Mexico state line, developers plan to turn Trinidad, Colo., center into a one-stop shop for pot tourism

On the first day the state of Colorado allowed the sale of recreational marijuana, Chris Elkins waited two hours in the freezing cold to buy weed.

"The line was down the stairwells, down the sidewalks, around the buildings, down the street," Elkins, who had traveled to Colorado from Arkansas for a long-planned ski trip, recalled about that New Year's Day in 2014.

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