Veterans Affairs committee  I would say that of course I do believe there should be access for especially the more sympathetic communities here that I think have been waiting a long time for research. They should have both financial accessibility as well as physician oversight. The one thing I would cauti

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, sir. I was part of the Colorado government. In fact, I was the governor's point person during the rollout from 2014 to 2017 of both medical and adult use cannabis. We taxed medical cannabis at a rate of 2.9% sales tax. Adult use had both a 10% excise tax and an addit

Veterans Affairs committee  No, they are not taxed at the 2.9% sales tax rate. That is specifically because this is not going through pharmacy and is considered a sale in the State of Colorado. Also, yes, the 2.9% is to other goods in Colorado.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having me appear before the committee. For those who don't know, I was the director of marijuana coordination under Governor Hickenlooper in Colorado for the rollout of what we referred to as medical and recreational marijuana. I have since started a f

Health committee  Thank you. I think public health survey data is lacking in types of marijuana used, frequency of use, potency of use, and times of use. We get back good youth data every two years, but we should be getting that back in a much more timely fashion. The public health data is simply

Health committee  Absolutely, it would be my pleasure.

Health committee  Yes, I think the economics of this are such that, barring extreme taxation or a regulation that makes a normal consumer feel like they are missing out on a variety that they prefer—especially over time and as people create different behaviour patterns—we've seen very quickly that

Health committee  I can't agree more with Ms. Weeks. It's also one of the easier lessons learned on this. There are a few things. People want marijuana to pay its own way. That's an easy enough solution. There have been times when we've taken a loan out against our general fund that we then repay

Health committee  No, they are not. On the state level, they have to at least mirror alcohol, which I believe means they have to close at 10 p.m., but cities have decided to change those hours to.... That's the ceiling. They can go to 8 p.m., 6 p.m., and so on. In Denver, for a long time it was 6

Health committee  In Colorado, we don't bar vertical integration on either the medical or recreational side. In fact, on the medical side we require vertical integration. Most often, the thing I hear about why you want to bar vertical integration is to prevent a monopoly situation and the growth o

Health committee  It certainly makes sense. What they're going to argue is that the more players in the market, the more people who are likely to not be in compliance with the laws. Dealing with fewer actors who have more capital to be compliant will create better actors. Certainly there is a tra

Health committee  I'm not sure I have much to add over Dr. Sabet's analysis. Honestly, I don't have expertise on what criminalization with regard to 12- to 17-year-olds would do to consumption patterns. I just don't have that much to add, expertise-wise.

Health committee  It's hard to say because we don't always see the product in the black market, but we have instituted pretty rigorous pesticide controls and homogeneity controls on edibles, and contaminant testing, which have, over time, really increased the quality and consistency of what's insi

Health committee  Thank you, because it's a very important distinction. It is important to note that in Colorado it's pretty easy to get to 99 plants. It was, by the way; we cleaned up the legislation to 12 plants. It's hard for me to say, but I would say there's a lot less evidence that something