Denver is America's cannabis capital. Reefers, pipes, bongs — even candy — whichever way you roll, it's all legal

The mile-high city is what they call Denver on the tourist brochures and the posters — it sits in the lap of the Rocky Mountains. So it was with the serendipity of nominative determination that Colorado became the first state to legalise recreational use of marijuana in America — thus  transferring the slogan onto a million hilarious hippie T-shirts.

The cannabis industry is expanding and jobs like budtending are on the rise! In the last year and a half we have seen one of the largest expansions of the cannabis industry than ever before, in fact the expansion being felt is higher than any other American industry right now. In the coming months as the general elections begin and the political climate becomes activated the issue of legalization will become more important than ever. There are 9 states expected to consider legalization of cannabis as a medical treatment and as a result the potential infrastructure is primed to create more businesses and even more jobs!

Dispensaries

Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass. Dope. Most of us can think of a few names for it, and most of us probably have an opinion on it too. Across the world, the cannabis plant is both loved and hated, lauded and denigrated. Advocates of the herb claim it’s harmless and can cure all manner of ailments. And critics say it’s a gateway drug with a plethora of dangerous and irreversible side effects, both psychologically and physically.

GOP presidential candidates dislike legal marijuana — but some support Colorado's right to have the law (Slideshow) - Denver Business Journal

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at an impromptu media conference on June 27,… more

Republican presidential candidates speaking in Denver this weekend uniformly criticized the state’s legalization of recreational marijuana — but also said for the most part that they would not attempt to overturn what they considered to be an issue of states’ rights.

You can buy a Budweiser in Vail. You can smoke a bud, as in the flowering portion of a cannabis plant, in the privacy of your own home. But buy a bud, shatter, wax or chocolate chip cookies infused with THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis?

Not yet. And perhaps not ever. Unlike some other ski towns in Colorado, which have chosen to treat marijuana similar to alcohol in important ways, Vail has been deeply ambivalent about allowing sales. Almost everybody would agree that attitudes toward cannabis use have rapidly changed, and many people would agree that it’s for the better that the economy of cannabis has been brought above ground.

One of Vancouver Island's largest medical marijuana growing companies announced Thursday it is laying off 61 employees.

Tilray opened its Nanaimo facility in 2014 and at its peak employed nearly 200 people, giving it a high profile as a major employer in the region.

The company insists the layoffs will not have any impact on "the thousands of patients we serve," according to a statement from Tilray CEO Greg Engel.

"Tilray is making changes to our operating model to more efficiently serve patients and the MMPR market as it exists today," Engel wrote.

"Tilray is well-capitalized and confident in our long-term business strategy, and we are operating more efficiently than ever before."

Major employer

WALSENBURG, Colo. – A developer's plan to build hundreds of cannabis greenhouses could make this tiny southern Colorado town one of the nation's largest producers of legal marijuana.

The town sold 330 acres of municipal land for more than $1 million to create a campus for growing, processing and distribution, with the marijuana to be trucked 160 miles north to consumers in metro Denver. Walsenburg is a former coal mining town that never recovered when the mines closed by the 1960s, and its population has dropped to fewer than 3,000 residents. In Huerfano County, which is home to Walsenburg, 20% of the population lives below poverty level.

John Stix founded what may be one of the happiest companies in Canada. And thanks to the Plasticity Labs app he has the data to prove it: average happiness scores at his company, Fibernetics, hover in the high 80s to low 90s—impressively chipper stats.

Stix’s description of his corporate headquarters in Cambridge, Ont., makes Google’s fun-seeking campus sound dull. (“Let’s see, when do we have craft classes?” he says, mulling the in-house schedule. “Is it Thursday? Oh no, that’s boxing club.”)

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On a cold day in January 2014, political strategist Ian James rode the elevator with two lawyers to the 11th floor of the Scripps Center to arrive at the office of a Cincinnati wheeler-dealer. The four men sat down, made some small talk. Then James took a deep breath and made his pitch for an Ohio revolution.

"I had not met Jimmy Gould before," James recalled, "so I just asked if he were interested in the legalization of marijuana for personal use or for medical use. I didn't know how this was going to go over. But no sooner had the words come out of my mouth, Jimmy said, 'I'm in.' "

Working at a medical marijuana dispensary in 2015, you never know what type of questions you’ll get. Bryan Willkomm, general manager at Humboldt Patient Resource Center in Arcata, said a lot of folks, especially the seasoned old-timers, will just take a sniff of the various buds on offer and say, “Smells good to me.” That whiff gives them all the information they need. Others are more demanding.