By Mike Rosso
Wow, another year has come and gone and we are now staring down the barrel of the late Twenty-teens.
marijuana
The Weed of Wrath
By Hal Walter
Marijuana. Most folks are either decidedly for it or against it. Me? I’m mostly a weed spectator though I lean toward the libertarian viewpoint that a person has the right to do whatever to their own body so long as it doesn’t harm others.
Like it or not, marijuana is now legal for both medical and recreational purposes in Colorado and business is booming. You can tell this by the number of shops with mostly cutesy names like “Starbuds” and “Mile High Green Cross” along the highways. And also by the number of greenhouse grow operations springing up across the countryside, particularly in nearby Pueblo County. Whether all this will withstand possible federal legal challenges remains to be seen, but for now a person can buy weed in several Colorado counties and municipalities, and some insiders say the biotech boom in northern Colorado is based on the prospect of future pharmaceutical takeover of the cannabis industry.
Here where I live in Custer County there is a ban on sales and industrial cultivation of marijuana, though residents are free to buy it elsewhere and use it privately.
Meanwhile, to the east, Pueblo County has been called the “Napa Valley of Weed” by The Denver Post and the Colorado Springs Gazette. I’ve been astounded by both the number and size of the grow operations that have sprung up along Colorado Route 96 in western Pueblo County.
From the Editor – About the Cover
by Mike Rosso The photo of a hemp plant gracing this month’s cover was taken at a farm in Cañon City in mid-June. We chose this photograph to illustrate our article about this particular strain of cannabis, also legalized by Colorado’s Amendment 64 in 2012, but containing little if any of the psychoactive components found …
Hemp: Colorado’s Next Big Thing
By Mike Rosso
Colorado voters made history in 2012 when they passed Amendment 64, allowing for the cultivation, sale and personal use of marijuana.
But easily overshadowed by its sexier cousin was the part of that ballot initiative that also allows for the growing and processing of industrial hemp. Although 64 did not authorize the immediate cultivation of hemp, it directed the General Assembly to enact legislation regarding it. With sponsors Rep. Don Coran and former Sen. Gail Schwartz, they passed SB13-241, the Industrial Hemp Growers Registration DOA, which was signed into law by Gov. Hickenlooper in May 2013.
Hemp, like marijuana, is derived from the cannabis plant, but contains little if any of the psychoactive components of the popular recreational drug. What hemp does provide is an endless number of commercial, industrial and medical benefits from the entire plant – from stem to seed. It also requires fewer pesticides for growth than most major food crops and requires considerably less water than crops such as corn.
Hemp is currently legal in many other parts of the world including most of Europe. Russia, Japan, Thailand, Chile, India and Canada are among many others that produce industrial hemp, but the leading producer of in the world is – who else? – China.
Colorado’s Historic Amendment 64
By Mike Rosso
Election day in Salida was unusually bright and sunny. Since I’d already voted by mail, I decided to spend some time sipping coffee in the sun outside Café Dawn, chatting up some of the customers and passersby.
I started asking random folks how they voted, not on the general election – around which there was much anxiety – but how they voted on Amendment 64. “Which one was that?” was a common response, and when I mentioned it was about the statewide legalization of marijuana, most relaxed and their answers came as a surprise.
The Colorado Cannabis Question
by Jennifer Dempsey
When Salida resident Harold Coffman was diagnosed with bladder cancer last year he began taking a cocktail of prescription drugs that included pain-relieving narcotics, antibiotics and laxatives to ease his pain.
On the recommendation of a friend, Coffman tried marijuana as an alternative pain reliever. The relief was almost instantaneous and he immediately went to his doctor in Salida to apply for a medical marijuana user’s license.