Legalized Rec Marijuana - one year later

[BOMBAYCAT]

Denver Post - Sunday, December 28, 2014
The Post had a large (24 full pages) about legalized Recreational Marijuana after one full year. It's a good read. Some interesting points:

1. Colorado got a lot of experience running the MMJ program.
2. People said it would be the end of the world. Nothing happened.
3. Big players like Monsanto and Altreia are ready to step into the US market when US legalizes nationwide.
4. Edibles were a total screw up. Demand for edibles was very high (sorry!) and the inexperience (and pre-existing conditions) of the new users led to possible deadly incidents.
5. There needs to be serious studies about what medical conditions MMJ and Rec are good for.

This should be a good program to copy by other states that want to legalize.

 

[betshtick]

Biggest failure in CO imho is the lack of controls over pesticide/fungicide use.

People simply wouldn't believe what some of the big guys are using on their "medicine" every single crop, pests or no pests.

 

[lovinthegreen]

Yea i moved away from Colorado to find much cleaner medicine on the west coast overall. And as a person with a recommendation i can take my final products right to the labs... Colorado was so stupid to get rid of personal sample testing. one of the big reasons i moved from there was because all these places promise to have high CBD medicine and when i get there it either smells of AVID/other chemicals commonly found in colorado meds or they are out, or the best one... they want 40+ for an 8th of high CBD... I love colorado and all it has to offer but the medical/rec scene is far from california. As soon as california legalizes they will be the model to look after. California as a whole does way more on the testing side of things plus we don't allow AVID.... For ornamental plant use only people!!! fucking flat billed hat wearing fools out in colorado. If you ask me colorado is full of a bunch of money grabbers who could care less what they sell you as long as they can get a new car every year and live in a 1million+ dollar home... Now that doesn't speak for all dispensaries of course just a lot off them and most if not all in the denver area.... :/ Also as a california resident i can produce a little extra medicine every harvest to donate to a collective to offset my grow costs. Makes it so i can medicate for free and still help out those who don't have the ability or time to grow there own I rest my case, colorado is getting there but take it from someone who has lived in both colorado and california, California has had it right since 1996 and the education of the general public around here far supposes the masses of colorado on this plant. Generations of growers since the 60's vs a brand new up n' coming market... it makes me laugh when a grower of 2 years thinks they know it all when all they did was take one of there buddies strains and run the exact same regiment while hitting it with avid all the way through. Shits fucking gross out there... Wake up people, AVID is illegal in California, i wonder why? And a question to any of you who wear there flat billed hats with the cannabis references.. Why? you look like a tool and make the rest of us professionals in the industry look bad.

 

[lovinthegreen]

I think its a grass roots hat? They just bug me and make you look like you take 30 dabs a day.

 

[Rotel]

Only gripe the squares have seems to be black market related. Colorado missed the boat on that as they prohibited legal growers from wholesaling to MMC / RMC.

 

[Rotel]

P.S. what does Avid smell like?

 

[lovinthegreen]

You ever smelt a pyrithrin bomb? kinda the same but now add in a chemical pressure treatment smell that you might use at a lumber mill... i have a very sensitive nose and have Asthma, the plant dose not smell the same at all after it has been treated during the flowering cycle with Avid. Also when i use chemical treated/grown bud vs organic non-sprayed bud in my volcano i notice that cannabis is not a useful for my restrictive airways. Just trying to be honest for others who use this as a medicine, and depend on it to be super clean so we may harness the full effect off this amazing flower.

 

[MJPassion]

Only gripe the squares have seems to be black market related. Colorado missed the boat on that as they prohibited legal growers from wholesaling to MMC / RMC.

^^^Yeah that!!!^^^

CO laws are designed to drive the black market... not check it.

 

[RedBeardy5]

Oh yeah, that avid smell is horrid. I have noticed a lot of these growers out here ane giving marijuana a bad name with their shitty product. It's pretty disappointing.

 

[ElevateWellness]

^^^Yeah that!!!^^^

CO laws are designed to drive the black market... not check it.

The black market exists in Colorado because the marijuana laws are more liberal here, so the people who want to grow and ship out of state have less of a chance of getting caught.

Not being able to sell home grown product to MME facilities is the correct thing to do. You are legally allowed to brew your own beer. You are not legal allowed to sell it to the grocery store until you get a business license.

While regulations do get used as a form of corruption, they start out to protect the consumers. Hopefully with new testing laws in colorado, we will see the regulations to stop companies using nasty toxic pesticides on cannabis and these regulation will actually work.

Home growers, because they do not have a license, are not in the system, and therefore are not held in check by the same regulations that the rest of the industry are.

The process to get a medical marijuana license in Colorado is very similar to if you were trying to get a liquor license and open a bar or club.

Having consulted and walked through this process with a MME group, I would say it is relatively friendly to the small business person or persons. If you struggle to get through the application process for the Colorado MME, you will probably struggle getting through the process for running any sort of small business that is regulated - Especially one that is as regulated as the cannabis industry is right now.