Backers say smokers need "place to go"; foes foresee "wrong message" Legal marijuana is giving Colorado a stinky conundrum. Visitors can buy the drug, but they can't use it in public. Or in a rental car. Or in most hotel rooms. The result is something marijuana advocates and opponents feared - people toking up on sidewalks, in city parks, and in alleys behind bars and restaurants - despite laws against doing so. And they're getting dinged with public marijuana consumption tickets. [continues 641 words]
DENVER (AP) - Legal marijuana is giving Colorado a stinky conundrum. Visitors can buy the drug, but they can't use it in public. Or in a rental car. Or in most hotel rooms. The result is something marijuana advocates and opponents alike feared - people toking up on sidewalks, in city parks and in alleys behind bars and restaurants - despite laws against doing so. And they're getting dinged with tickets. From Denver to mountain resorts like Aspen and Breckenridge, police wrote nearly 800 citations for the new crime of public consumption in 2014, the first year recreational sales began. [continues 287 words]
DENVER (AP) - Legal marijuana is giving Colorado a stinky conundrum. Visitors can buy the drug, but they can't use it in public. Or in a rental car. Or in most hotel rooms. The result is something marijuana advocates and opponents feared - people toking up on sidewalks, in city parks and in alleys behind bars and restaurants - despite laws against doing so. And they're getting dinged with public marijuana consumption tickets. From the capital city of Denver to mountain resorts like Aspen and Breckenridge, police wrote nearly 800 citations for the new crime of public consumption in 2014, the first year recreational sales began. [continues 421 words]
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. [continues 191 words]
DENVER (AP) - Marijuana is a political debate, not a legal one-for now. The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't consider a lawsuit filed by two other states challenging Colorado's pot law. But lawyers say that Nebraska and Oklahoma officials could pursue other legal challenges. For now, the many states considering pot laws this year won't have immediate guidance from the nation's high court about whether they're free to flout federal drug law by regulating the drug. Instead, the 26 states and Washington, D.C., that allow marijuana for medical or recreational purposes don't have any immediate roadblocks on their marijuana laws. [continues 352 words]
DENVER (AP) - Marijuana is a political debate, not a legal one - for now. The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't consider a lawsuit filed by two other states challenging Colorado's pot law. But lawyers say that Nebraska and Oklahoma officials could pursue other legal challenges. For now, the many states considering pot laws this year won't have immediate guidance from the nation's high court about whether they're free to flout federal drug law by regulating the drug. Instead, the 26 states and Washington, D.C., that allow marijuana for medical or recreational purposes don't have any immediate roadblocks on their marijuana laws. [continues 352 words]
DENVER (AP) - Marijuana is a political debate, not a legal one - for now. The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't consider a lawsuit filed by two other states challenging Colorado's pot law. But lawyers say that Nebraska and Oklahoma officials could pursue other legal challenges. For now, the many states considering pot laws this year won't have immediate guidance from the nation's high court about whether they're free to flout federal drug law by regulating the drug. Instead, the 26 states and Washington, D.C., that allow marijuana for medical or recreational purposes don't have any immediate roadblocks on their marijuana laws. [continues 351 words]
DENVER (AP) - Marijuana is a political debate, not a legal one - for now. The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't consider a lawsuit filed by two other states challenging Colorado's pot law. But lawyers say that Nebraska and Oklahoma officials could pursue other legal challenges down the road. For now, the many states considering pot laws this year won't have immediate guidance from the nation's high court about whether they're free to flout federal drug law by regulating the drug. [continues 410 words]
DENVER (AP) - Colorado's tourists aren't just buying weed now that it's legal - they're ending up in emergency rooms at rates far higher than residents, a study said. Doctors reviewed marijuana-related emergency-room admissions at a hospital near Denver International Airport during 2014, when the sale of recreational pot became legal. The results were published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The physicians found that the rate of emergency-room visits possibly related to marijuana doubled among out-of-state residents in the first year of recreational pot sales. The rate went from 85 per 10,000 visits in 2013 to 168 per 10,000 visits in 2014. [continues 242 words]
DENVER (AP) - States that have legalized pot are taking a fresh look at making it easier for out-of-state investors to get in the weed business, saying the industry's ongoing difficulty in banking means they need new options to finance expansion. The four states that allow recreational pot sales - Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington - have another big reason to take a new look at pot investment: California. It's the nation's most populous state and largest marijuana producer, though it allows the drug only for people with certain medical ailments. [continues 546 words]
Legal Protections on Shaky Ground DENVER (AP) - Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine. As the fast-growing marijuana industry emerges from the black market and starts looking like a mainstream industry, there's a scramble to brand and trademark pot products. The celebrity endorsements are just the latest attempt to add cachet to a line of weed. Snoop Dogg calls his eight strains of weed "Dank From the Doggfather Himself." Nelson's yet-to-be-released line says the pot is "born of the awed memories of musicians who visited Willie's bus after a show." [continues 737 words]
Name-Dropping But Entrepreneurs Are Operating Without Any Legal Protection We're in a new industry, where the benefits of federal protection aren't open to us." CEO of LivWell, a 10-store chain of Colorado marijuana shops DENVER (AP) - Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine. As the fast-growing marijuana industry emerges from the black market and starts looking like a mainstream industry, there's a scramble to brand and trademark pot products. [continues 787 words]
DENVER (AP) - Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine. As the fast-growing marijuana industry emerges from the black market and starts looking like a mainstream industry, there's a scramble to brand and trademark pot products. The celebrity endorsements are just the latest attempt to add cachet to a line of weed. Snoop Dogg calls his eight strains of weed "Dank From the Doggfather Himself." Nelson's yet-to-be-released line says the pot is "born of the awed memories of musicians who visited Willie's bus after a show." [continues 740 words]
(AP) - Snoop Dogg has his own line of marijuana. So does Willie Nelson. Melissa Etheridge has a marijuana-infused wine. As the fast-growing marijuana industry emerges from the black market and starts looking like a mainstream industry, there's a scramble to brand and trademark pot products. The celebrity endorsements are just the latest attempt to add cachet to a line of weed. Snoop Dogg calls his eight strains of weed "Dank From the Doggfather Himself." Nelson's yet-to-be-released line says the pot is "born of the awed memories of musicians who visited Willie's bus after a show." [continues 474 words]
DENVER (AP) - The booming marijuana industry went to a federal judge Monday seeking an answer to the problem that has vexed business owners trying to emerge from the black market: Now that pot is legal and taxed in some states, why can't they put the proceeds in a bank? A Colorado credit union designed to serve the pot industry - Fourth Corner Credit Union - was challenging a decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to keep the pot bank from accessing the nation's financial system. The feds' rejection earlier this year means that the pot bank can't take deposits or issue credit - leaving many marijuana businesses operating on a cash-only basis. [continues 509 words]
Colo.'s Try at Setting Up Credit Union for Pot Funds Rejected DENVER (AP) - Colorado's attempt to create a bank to service its marijuana industry has suffered another setback by the federal government and could be facing an impossible dilemma. The Federal Reserve - the guardian of the U.S. banking system - said in a court filing this week that it doesn't intend to accept a penny connected to the sale of pot because the drug remains illegal under federal law. [continues 385 words]
Growers Benefit, Too, Saving $300 a Pound DENVER - Tim Cullen smiled when he reckoned a one-day marijuana tax holiday in Colorado had probably saved him tens of thousands of dollars. Cullen, the owner of Colorado Harvest Co., a chain of marijuana dispensaries, was among the many growers and shoppers who benefited Wednesday from a quirk that required the state to suspend a 10 percent sales tax and a 15 percent wholesale excise tax for a day. While shoppers saved roughly $20 an ounce, or about 33 cents per joint, pot growers saved $300 a pound. [continues 306 words]
DENVER (AP) - A Colorado county may create the world's first public college scholarship program funded with marijuana money. Pueblo County, south of Colorado Springs, is considering a 5 percent excise tax on marijuana growers, with half the proceeds designated to a scholarship fund that boosters say would be the first of its kind. County Commissioner Sal Pace, the sponsor of the tax measure, said it could produce a couple of million dollars a year. The full commission will vote on his proposal next week, and if approved, voters would have to approve the excise tax in November before it would take effect. [continues 176 words]
(AP) - Edible marijuana products in Colorado may soon come labeled with a red stop sign, according to a draft of new rules released Tuesday by state marijuana regulators. The state may also ban the word "candy" from edible pot products, even if they're sweets such as suckers or gummy chews. The new pot symbol - an octagon stop-sign shape with the letters "THC" to indicate marijuana's psychoactive ingredient - would have to be on individual edible items, not just labels. Liquid marijuana products would be limited to single-serve packaging - defined as 10 milligrams of THC. [continues 201 words]
DENVER (AP) - Microscopic bugs and mildew can destroy a marijuana operation faster than any police raid. And because the crop has been illegal for so long, neither growers nor scientists have any reliable research to help fight the infestations. As legal marijuana moves from basements and backwoods to warehouses and commercial fields, the mold and spider mites that once ruined only a few plants at a time can now quickly create a multimillion-dollar crisis for growers. Some are turning to industrial-strength chemicals, raising concerns about safety. [continues 612 words]
