In the past year, I have been amazed at all of the red tape that has been born to this industry.  The requirements are sometimes laughable. I have been impressed with the companies out there that have really risen to the challenge and started producing legitimate brands.  We used to have to fight with certain edible vendors who came through our doors for any kind of label to identify their product's ingredients, potency and suggested dosage.  Our staff had to become guiney pigs to try the products before we would put them on our shelves.  Invoice?  What are you talking about?!  Scheduled orders? Eh, what? But the times they are a changin' and recently we have aligned ourselves with some great vendors.  They have great packaging, with dosages and ingredients.  A little symbol at the bottom shows us that their product is tested in a lab. These are all things that are great for our industry.  We need to adopt standards of practice so that the medicine that people get is exactly what they are expecting....

Boulder Kind Care co-owner, Lance Smith was diagnosed with lymphoma early in the spring of 2010. He is recently cancer-free, and attributes it to his access to medicinal marijuana. “It was literally the only thing that made me feel better during my chemo treatments.” Cannabis has been found to help cancer patients with pain and nausea, and recent research indicates it has tumor-reducing and anti-carcinogenic properties as well. It has proven highly effective at controlling the nausea associated with chemotherapy, and its appetite stimulation properties help combat wasting. Cannabis can also help control the pain associated with some cancers, as well as that resulting from radiation and chemotherapy treatment (Americans for Safe Access). Because of his own success story, Lance is frustrated and saddened for all the other cancer patients in the U.S. who don’t have access to MMJ, especially considering how commonplace cannabis is discussed among the general medical community. “In my initial consultation...

After a long, busy, saddening day—we discovered several more of our members/visitors have lost their homes to the tragic Fourmile Fire—I thought it appropriate to wind down with Green Sky Confections Boulder Cookie. I find that edibles give me a body high rather than a smoker’s heady high. I don’t always eat my MMJ, but when I do I’ve usually been very happy with its effects. Because I have a nagging shoulder injury and recent knee surgery, which has thrown off my gait and posture entirely, I find myself in more and more pain in the evenings. So I ate the Boulder Cookie, in "high" hopes that my physical ailments would wash away into relaxation and comfort. I ate a little less than a quarter of the cookie—I’m a light weight—and not 20 minutes later I was feeling much better. My shoulder and neck relaxed immediately. Yet, I still felt alert enough to do some computer work that needed attention. I didn’t have that stony, distracted feeling I sometimes get from smoking. Plus, it tasted amazing! It’s made...

We personally know at BKC through our own experiences with cancer, disease and injury, as many of you do, that cannabis consumption reduces pain and is one of the best nausea fighters out there. What many of you don’t know, because of the federal blockade on MMJ research, is that recent overseas medical studies are finding very promising characteristics of cannabinoids (66 compounds found in cannabis). Some of the brightest discoveries are cannabis’s ability to fight cancer cells and regulate autoimmune diseases. The challenge is convincing the broader medical community and the rest of America. In the private overseas sector, there has been well over 2,000 MMJ studies and 17,000 papers published in the last two years. Most notably are recent findings that cannabinoids can moderate autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease, as well as their role in the treatment of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Equally...

Federal vs. State: a classic loop-hole story Despite it’s coined name as the “peace” plant, the current controversies surrounding marijuana are anything but. As dispensaries have grown in numbers, there has been a lot of misinformation. Of recent, there have been violent anti-marijuana attacks on dispensaries in Billings, MT, and numerous in-court battles between anti-marijuana municipalities and legitimate licensed dispensaries. Anti-MMJ cities and municipalities may be victims to ignorant “reefer madness” propaganda about the plant, but they all have one legitimate argument: federal classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, which is considered to be dangerous and has no medical benefits. It’s difficult to deny fed fearing citizens, especially elderly folks who have witnessed a threatening overreach in federal powers over the last 70 years. Federal classification and regulation of cannabis contradicts states rights to issue licenses and determine the overall good for its constituents. Under...