Cannabis in Colorado: Dispatches from the Green Revolution Contents
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SMOKE&MIRACLES Cannabis in Colorado: Dispatches from the Green Revolution Contents ANDREW SCHWARTZ 4 Out with the Old What happens when your grandma says: “Let’s get high”? CHARLOTTE ALLYN 7 Little Green Cubicles The unlikely rise of cannabis consultants MITRA GHAFFARI 10 Fog of War Veterans’ rights to medical marijuana for PTSD treatment DANA CRONIN 14 Higher Office The mayor’s race and the future of cannabis in Colorado Springs HANNAH FLEMING 17 Slightly Sweet with a Touch of Dank It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it: The life of a professional pot critic ANNA SMITH 20 The Ganjapreneurs Meet the Stanley Brothers, Colorado’s marijuana millionaires EMELIE FROJEN 24 Big Steps with Small Feet One family’s struggle to save their daughter’s life with cannabis KAITLYN HICKMANN 30 Women in Weed 10 questions with Rachel K. Gillette ANNA SQUIRES 32 The Color of Cannabis Pulling back the curtain on racial profiling in Colo- rado’s marijuana enforcement BRETT MUELLER 37 Contents Unknown Arsenic. Heavy metals. E. Coli. When it comes to marijuana contaminants, what you don’t know might hurt you CALEIGH SMITH 40 Wonderplant How industrial hemp could clean up the world TESSA CARROLL 46 Rolling Stoned The straight dope on the legalities of driving high JACK QUEEN 48 Membership has its Privileges In which our intrepid correspondent explores the cannabis clubs of Colorado Springs 1 SMOKE&MIRACLES Cannabis in Colorado: Dispatches from the Green Revolution This magazine is brought to you by a group of students from Colorado College as the final project and culmination of our class. In the class, called “Going Long,” we learned and practiced techniques of long form journalism. This magazine, from initial brainstorming and writing, to editing, photography, and layout was completed in three and a half weeks. The “Cannabis in Colorado” theme was chosen by our professor, Hampton Sides, as a controversial, modern, complex and local issue we could report on in a unique time in Colorado’s history and the history of America. Edited by Hampton Sides Designed by Mitra Ghaffari and Kaitlyn Hickmann Hampton Sides instructs the “Going Long” class on how to conduct interviews. Behind him, from left to right, Caleigh Smith, Anna Smith, and Kaitlyn Hickmann listen. The class, taught by Sides and featuring several guest speakers, focuses on how to write a long form journalism piece. Photo by Bryan Oller Cover photos Top and bottom middle by Mitra Ghaffari Bottom left by Hannah Fleming Bottom right by Emelie Frojen This anthology was produced as a classroom project by Colorado College journalism students and is viewable by invitation only. Not for reproduction * Not for sale * For educational purposes only 2 3 impulse to experiment. ago. My father, a real estate lawyer, was in the process of On Mother’s Day, after the customary greetings, I handling the contracts for 70 Pine, an art deco skyscraper managed to hold my grandmother on the line for long that was being converted from an AIG headquarters to enough to ask her a few questions about pot and how a condominium complex. The top six floors, which had she managed to avoid it for eight decades. “Pot? I didn’t previously hosted the offices of AIG’s corporate board, touch it! Not only because it was supposed to make you were to become Belgian businessman Ronny Bruckner’s Out with the åOld go on killing sprees! I mostly didn’t want any of it because private home. On this particular Father’s Day, 70 Pine was What happens when your grandma says: I thought it would make me stupider and go to jail.” completely vacant, so my father asked Ronny if we could “Let’s get high”? I pressed her for more. I wondered if her peers were use it to celebrate. ANDREW SCHWARTZ as experimental in their old age as she is. “Well, when The gold-plated elevator doors opened slowly and the everyone around you is dying and you read about sucky six of us, my siblings and parents and I, stepped in. The Wrinkly, Disgusting Old Bodies candies full of pot in Colorado, you get a little intrigued. elevator soared up eighty stories in sixty seconds. We A couple of summers ago, my family A lot of people don’t talk about it unless they’re with their had to disembark from that elevator and enter a second assembled for my cousin’s misguided grandkids, and then they ask them on the sly if they can elevator to ascend to the private offices at the building’s wedding. We were all dreading it, but reveled smuggle the suckies to Florida. Most grandkids say yes apex. Mom had ordered a platter of sushi, and we ate it a little in the camaraderie afforded to us and then forget. Or they don’t forget, and all of the yentls in a tiny room at the top of the world as the sun set over by our shared plight. My grandmother, a sit around going OY! They’d rather wait for their grown the glittering island called Manhattan. We watched the characteristically blunt yet lighthearted and sons or daughters to come watch them eat the candies millions of windows flicker on like stars in the night sky lively comic, was always our ringleader in just in case they, you know . .” and imagined for a second what all of the little occupants these situations, and she suddenly declared Grandma made the kind of sound a neck makes when of those many windows were doing. Who were they? that she was ready to try smoking pot. snapping. “I’d say people at Pelican Cove aren’t so afraid What were their stories? “Grandma, really?” of the idea of pot anymore. But mostly what they’re Was that a joint in Andrew’s mouth? Was Andrew “Yes! Yes! Do you have some?” worried about is that they’ve got wrinkly disGUSTing old lighting a joint? “I mean, we don’t have any here, but we bodies!” I was lighting a joint. “ANDREW!” shouted my father. can smoke you up another time.” “What?” I retorted nonchalantly, as if I was so oblivious “I wanna try it! Really! I wanna feel like She grabbed the joint and to the cause of the declaration that it almost offended me. I’m floating!” she rapturously exclaimed in “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” he yelled, stifling her Yonkers accent. drew it slowly and shakily laughter. Grandma was all dressed up in a maroon “I’m lighting a joint.” I said. I passed it to Brett as I and black sequin dress, with her soft, to her heavily painted lips. exhaled. Brett was wide-eyed and confused. He took a hit wrinkled face holding exorbitant amounts on autopilot; not so much voluntarily as impulsively. of makeup in a manner both befitting and “That’s enough!,” I said, “I actually don’t mind,” said my mother, taking the joint beautiful to her aged face. She had a big, and she instantly started out of Brett’s fingers and looking somewhat mockingly at bouncy laugh and an endlessly excited his catatonic face. “It’s a special occasion Carl, let’s have expression. She was taller than most women coughing. a little fun.” and wore her white hair stylishly cropped. Round and round it went. We all got a little high and “You can when you come to Colorado,” stepped out onto the terrace to take in the views. Mother I offered. I asked her what made her so brave. “I guess I wanted broke the silence. “Wasn’t it better when we were all “Yes please! I wanna try it! I really wanna to try it because I wanted to try something new. When tadpoles?” she said. try it!” She grabbed my face, squeezed, and Alice Schwartz taking her first hit. Photo by Andrew Schwartz you’re 83 and your husband and best friend is dead and I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but it seemed kissed it, and sauntered off to be fawned upon by the your grandkids are doing something you’ve never done, that the weed had kicked in. “It might have been,” I crowd. My three siblings and I stood in her wake, our her being high. Maybe one day, I mused. Maybe one day. you want to try it! OY! Luz is here sweetheart, I gotta go, responded, “had we at any time been tadpoles.” mouths agape at the declaration we had just witnessed. Grandma’s desire to smoke pot threw me for a loop. ta!” “Don’t be a smart-ass, Andrew,” she replied curtly. “I guess it’s going to happen,” said my brother Casey. “It My brand-name prep school education featured a health “Love you Grandma!” “We were all tadpoles once. We could swim right up looks like we’re going to have to give Grandma some pot.” class where I learned all about Reefer Madness, the 1936 “Ok, likewise, goodbye sweet boy!” She clicked off the Madison Avenue. We could just take a straight shot right We all heaved a deep sigh and took our seats, wishing we propaganda film that taught Americans to associate phone in a rush. up Madison and we’d be on the Upper East Side without had brought some pot to watch the doomed lovers bind pot smoking with murderous rampages. It was not so having to deal with any cabs or subways and BOOM! themselves into what would later be an expensive divorce. surprising to me that my grandmother had managed Let’s Have A Little Fun We’d go right across the park and your father and I would I cast a sidelong glance at Grandma who looked bored.