DENVER –  Colorado's governor signed into law a crackdown on medical marijuana Monday, one of two measures designed to ferret out people improperly using and selling untaxed marijuana.

The law limits caregivers, those who grow pot on behalf of patients, to 99 plants. The change means that some high-volume caregivers will face the same oversight as commercial growers, paying licensing fees and undergoing background checks.

The new rules have support from the recreational pot industry, which has complained that light regulation on Colorado's caregivers has invited black-market growers who don't face residency requirements, background checks or commercial "seed-to-sale" tracking used to ensure pot plants are grown and sold legally.

Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Lowell knows people in his community buy marijuana from Colorado.

“When we ask where it came from, without exception, it’s Colorado,” Lowell said. “I assume they’re going across the border, purchasing and coming back.”

But those purchases in Colorado, where marijuana was legalized last year, haven’t translated into an increase in prosecutions for possessing the drug. In fact, marijuana charges in Sweetwater County dropped 18 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Overall, the county has maintained an average of 36 marijuana charges each year for the past three years.

“The change in drug arrests has been nonexistent,” Lowell said.

In this 2014 file photo, master grower Evan Schick steps lightly as he waters the 750 marijuana plants jammed into his facility, which supplies Walking Raven dispensary. (John Leyba, Denver Post file)

Job growth and pot growth are fueling record high lease rates and low vacancies in Denver's industrial real estate market.

"Competition for industrial space in the Denver market is very aggressive," said Dawn McCombs, senior vice president and industrial specialist at the Denver office of brokerage Avison Young. "The lack of quality options for tenants is driving rental rates higher than I have ever seen."

DENVER — A victory for The Denver Department of Environmental Health after a judge maintained the department’s hold on thousands of marijuana plants.

In March, the city quarantined thousands of plants from several cultivation sites because a pesticide may have been improperly used.

On March 25, the Denver Department of Environmental Health found evidence that plants at six locations had been contaminated by pesticides which are not approved by the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The businesses involved cannot sell the marijuana which has been placed on hold.

The convention floor at Denver Airport’s Crowne Plaza on a recent afternoon could have been the trade show for any well-established industry — gray-haired execs in conservative suits mingling with office park dads in polos and fresh-out-of-college types in brand-emblazoned T-shirts. Only this is a new kind of business conference with a special Colorado theme: legal weed.

After Colorado voters legalized marijuana in 2012, more states and cities are considering a similar path for themselves. At the same time, the cannabis market is looking less like a music festival and more like a Silicon Valley confab — upscale, data-driven and focused on investors.

Denver is magical at dawn. Along the western horizon, the snow-capped mountains are bathed in pink from the glow of the rising sun. The sky is turning purest blue. The air is crisp and clear, and you can see forever.

What a great place to get stoned. Which I intend to do, as soon as possible.

In Colorado, recreational marijuana was legalized on Jan. 1, 2014. Denver now has more pot stores than it has Starbucks. Anyone over the age of 21 can walk into a store and choose from hundreds of varieties of flowers, nibbles, marijuana-infused drinks, oils, ointments and pain patches, as well as a growing array of wax and other supercharged hard-core products. There’s even a sex lube for women, which promises to deliver the most mind-blowing experience of your life.

COLORADO SPRINGS — A disabled Sand Creek High School student was suspended Monday after school officials discovered medical marijuana in his lunch box, according to Gazette news partner KKTV.

Jackson Stormes, 16, has constant seizures because of Dravet Syndrome, which has left him severely disabled. His mother, Jennie Stormes, says cannabis is the only medicine that has stemmed the seizures. Instead of seizing for 30 to 60 minutes at a time, the episodes last only two to three minutes.

Management of a month-old Colorado Springs radio station dedicated to all things marijuana said technical problems Friday forced it to substitute other types of programming, but assured that all-things-pot programming would return Saturday.

But a few hours later, KHIG-AM owner Mike Knar sent an email to say the marijuana format has gone up in smoke, at least at 1580 AM.

He said the station's format is changing to include "lively music, a shopping show and information and news under the new moniker KFCS - Colorado Springs Own."

The KHIG format will continue online, he said, because that's how most of the audience tunes in.

Here’s some marijuana news to chew on: A Front Range meat-production plant has designs to ship some of its products to a location at the Aspen Business Center, where the meat will be infused with cannabis for distribution to recreational and medical marijuana dispensaries. Among its cannabis-inspired offerings: jerky, dried sausage, beef sticks, smoked salmon and chocolate-covered bacon.

One of the business’ principals, John Conlin, said Thursday that this latest marijuana incarnation is the first of its kind.

“If you follow the marijuana industry, pretty much with every product, someone has infused it with marijuana,” he said. “It’s across the board, but we should be the first in the world for this.”

PotLocator.com and Bambu Rolling Papers, co-attendees only at that year’s 2015 Denver Cannabis Cup, need Denver’s best shared rollers showing down their skills and face-off against both to see having the quickest hands.

PotLocator.com is a site which provides directories to caregivers, collectives, co-operatives, associations, compassion clubs, distribution solutions, wellness facilities, resource facilities, cannabis dispensaries and physicians and was created as a method of linking medical marijuana patients to organizations into the cannabis business.