Medicine

The new pot biz: Marijuana institutes

Calling Professor Pot!​The explosive growth of Colorado's marijuana dispensary scene is sooo September 2009. The next big thing, it turns out, is marijuana institutes -- organizations designed to help folks makes heads or tails of the heady medical marijuana scene. The development is a no-bra ... More >>

Wake-Up Call: My life has gone to pot

​It's been three weeks since we first posted news of our search for a medical-marijuana reviewer. Within five minutes of that posting, we had our first application for this extremely part-time job. Within ten minutes, our first media inquiry. And the applications and media calls keep coming. ... More >>

Medical-marijuana advocates fight Mexican drug cartel reports with the Always Buy Colorado Cannabis pledge

Coming to a medical-marijuana dispensary near you?​Opponents of medical-marijuana laws like Colorado Attorney General John Suthers are increasingly playing the crime card -- implying that the proliferation of dispensaries in Colorado is fueling illegal and increasingly dangerous behavior (with ... More >>

SAFER's Mason Tvert on medical marijuana, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and a weed poll on the rise

Mason Tvert gets ready for Halloween. Busted!​It's already been a big week in marijuana. Yesterday, the Obama administration issued new, less strident rules about medical-marijuana, prompting Colorado Attorney General and anti-pot crusader John Suthers to demand tighter regulations on dispensa ... More >>

Was the Dan Tang Drug Trafficking Organization in cahoots with Colorado dispensaries?

The grow houses had a lot of pot -- but was it going to dispensaries?​In February 2008, as detailed in the recent Westword stories "Up in Smoke" and "Tales of the Dragon," DEA agents and north metro narcotics detectives uncovered an indoor marijuana ring the likes of which Colorado had never s ... More >>

Wake-Up Call: Talk about the Mile High (and Higher) City!

​Even Balloon Boy couldn't knock our hunt for a medical-marijuana reviewer out of the national news. Yesterday, NPR's Sunday show ran a piece about our quest, resulting in still more applications coming in from across the country. But sorry, folks: We're looking for a Colorado resident, someon ... More >>

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers rips new Obama administration medical-marijuana regulations

"Stop using medical marijuana! In the name of my interpretation of the law!"​Colorado Attorney General John Suthers wants to put the medical-marijuana genie back in the bottle -- so it's hardly surprising that he's not thrilled by the Obama administration's efforts to put enforcement of rules ... More >>

Felony weed charges dropped against "pregnant caregiver" Sherri Versfelt

Sherri Versfelt shows off her baby bump.​Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett says he's "committed to having the most progressive approach to medical marijuana of any DA's office in the state." And yesterday, he took another step toward establishing that reputation by dismissing charges agai ... More >>

Betcha Jim Spencer loved making this call to the Post

"And here's another mistake you guys made..."​Back in 2007, the Denver Post's Jim Spencer was downsized right out of his plum metro-columnist's gig -- and months after landing a job as the communication director for the University of Colorado Denver's School of Medicine, he was still publicly ... More >>

Swine flu doesn't make for good times

Put this on.​Having to utter the words "emergency room" is almost never good. And when the sentence also involves your kid, it's even worse. Such was the case for me recently when I took my seven-year-old kid to the ER at Rose Medical Center after the fever he'd had for two days spiked to 103 ... More >>

Healthcare pro says "no" to swine-flu vaccine

The virus at work.​In a Tuesday blog, the Colorado Department of Health's Margaret Huffman reassured the public that the H1N1/swine-flu vaccine was safe and said concerns about it weren't dominating calls received on the state's CoHELP info line. If so, that flies in the face of a new Associat ... More >>

Cannabis Therapy Institute offers framework for dispensary regulations

​Last night, city councils at localities throughout the state, including Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville and Thornton, discussed the issue of medical-marijuana dispensaries at city council meetings. In Durango, for instance, officials approved preliminary tweaks in regulations, setting hours o ... More >>

What's scarier: swine flu or the vaccine to prevent it?

The virus.​Plenty of parents are terrified to vaccinate their children these days, fearing side effects that are worse than what the vaccine was intended to prevent in the first place. Such concerns are magnified in the case of H1N1, aka the swine flu. After all, as noted in Joel Warner's blog ... More >>

Wake-Up Call: Mile High City going to pot

​Yesterday, Westword's quest for a medical-marijuana critic made the New York Times, after already being featured in the Wall Street Journal, MSN and CNBC. My e-mail box overflowed and my phone rang off the hook. It's funny how the national media has jumped all over this. "Is this the most at ... More >>

Village Tavern toasts Breast Cancer Awareness Month with Hope-tini

​ During October, Village Tavern ,at 1 West Flatiron Crossing Drive in Broomfield, is marking the 25th anniversary of Breast Cancer Awareness Month by serving up special Hope-tini cocktails to raise money for breast cancer research. "People are definitely interested," says John Davis, Villag ... More >>

Will it be Hoppy Days for Oktoberfest?

Three brew-related events are converging in Denver. Let the games begin!

Could Clendenin case deal a blow to Colorado's pot biz?

​As noted in this week's cover story, "Pot of Gold," while Colorado's Amendment 20, which legalized marijuana in 2000, does not cover the subject of marijuana dispensaries, a flood of such operations are opening statewide under the auspices of a complicated legal framework that's evolved withi ... More >>

CU to host Cannabis Health Fair

​Colorado's confusing medical-marijuana laws have led to plenty of puffing on all sides of the issue, with the Cannabis Therapy Institute taking a leading role in pushing for greater availability of what it sees as a healing weed. Last week, the organization joined forces with other medical-ma ... More >>

The Cannabis Therapy Institute's open letter to Colorado officials

The logo of the Cannabis Therapy Institute.​The Cannabis Therapy Institute, an organization "dedicated to helping patients achieve a better quality of life with cannabis," may have an Iowa phone number, but it's been very involved of late with pot issues in Colorado. Its "About Us" page notes, ... More >>

The Beauvallon is bitter grounds for Aviano Coffee

Colorado's marijuana growing pains continue

​In July, at the end of a marathon twelve-plus hour hearing attended by hundreds, the state health board rejected contentious new restrictions on medical marijuana dispensaries, including one that may have limited them to five patients each. But that doesn't mean questions and controversies su ... More >>

Score one for medical marijuana: Health board rejects restrictions

After 12-plus hours of testimony, the state health board on Monday rejected a key restriction on medical marijuana dispensaries -- a rule that would have limited them to five patients each. You have to imagine this was the most attention ever heaped on the health board, which played host to hundreds ... More >>

Live blog: The Colorado Health Department's medical marijuana hearing

The Latest Word is at a Colorado Board of Health's hearing, where the board will consider new medical marijuana regulations that some believe will jeopardize the newly booming industry, as Joel Warner reported last week ("Will Monday be judgment day for Colorado's medical marijuana industry?"). We'l ... More >>

Will Monday be judgment day for Colorado's medical marijuana industry?

It's hard to understate the explosive rise of Colorado's medical marijuana industry. When Westword took an in-depth look at issue in the February 2009 article "Medical marijuana Has Become a Growth Industry in Colorado," just over 5,000 patients had been approved by the state to use marijuana -- w ... More >>

Dude, there's my pot! Boulder police set to return stolen weed to dispensary

New Options Wellness Clinic, a Boulder marijuana dispensary, had a real buzzkill last week when a group of robbers held up the operation and made off with two large tubs of marijuana. Things are looking up this week, however. Not only have the police identified four suspects in connection with the ... More >>

Boulder pot robbery could add wrinkle to July medical-marijuana hearing

Our February 4 story, "Medical Marijuana Has Become a Growth Industry in Colorado," described how the state's medical pot laws have fueled a booming dispensary industry -- an industry that was starting to look like the Wild West, with robberies and rip-off accusations thanks to lax regulations and ... More >>

Tour Denver the DaVita way

The announcement that DaVita, a healthcare giant specializing in kidney dialysis, is moving its corporate headquarters to the Denver area offers a rare bit of good economic news during a period filled with plenty of the opposite sort -- and judging by its website, execs at the firm understand that ... More >>

Kenny Be's Worst-Case Scenario: How to avoid the swine flu hypedemic, part2

Forget the Swine Flu epidemic. The Swine Flu hypedemic is far more contagious...

Prom, ganja and the smell test

Did Sarah Heideman's prom date smell like... this? Hard to ignore a press release with this headline: "Brighton High School Senior Excluded From Prom Because Her Date 'Smelled Like Medical Marijuana.'" According to the release, the incident in question involved Brighton High senior Sarah Heideman, ... More >>

Denver Health pledges to fix response times by adding paramedics

Talk about a change in bedside manner. In a presentation to members of City Council Wednesday, hospital administrators from Denver Health publicly acknowledged for the first time that their ambulance response times are not meeting national standards. The admissions, however subtle, came as the t ... More >>

Meet Dr. Marc Philippon, the man on whom Alex Rodriguez's 2009 season rests

Dr. Marc Philippon. Yesterday, baseball fans read plenty about Dr. Marc Philippon. He's the Vail-based hip expert who recently examined Yankees slugger (and admitted steroid user) Alex Rodriguez, determining that he's not only got a bizarre cyst -- wonder how that popped up? -- but also a torn labr ... More >>

Denver Health to City Auditor: You aren't the boss of us!

Denver Auditor Dennis Gallagher presented his office's long-awaited report on the city's emergency medical response system yesterday, saying that the information his team has compiled "speaks for itself." His choice of such a careful phrase to describe the scathing assessment is indicative of the ... More >>

Planned Parenthood -- for all your holiday gifts

I can be one hard gal to shop for, and I've been known to exchange, re-gift and return gifts. I can't help it -- which means many of my exhausted family members and friends have simply given up and retreated to the faithful standby of gift cards and certificates. Haters say the cards or certifica ... More >>

It takes balls to be the World Testicle Cooking Champion

Back when this city was so concerned with being lean and green, I wondered what that health-conscious program would do to the proper preparation of Rocky Mountain oysters, Colorado's unofficial state food (as seen on the Let's Talk Colorado tourism page, which I took to task for its general in ... More >>

A Denver Health paramedic fakes his license, and his boss keeps it under wraps

Breaking: Paramedic at Denver Health forged certification, boss covered up

Least popular button on 14th Street: FluVote

Letters to the Editor

Letters from the week of 6/19/2008

Gluten-Free Food Fair

Whoops!

Denver Health finally responds to response-time queries.

A Hospital Without Walls

Denver’s Court to Community program is showing promise.

Smokin' Stats About Colorado DUI Deaths

Jack Kevorkian and Colorado's Right to Die Movement

Day Three: Burger King on Colfax and Kalamath

Yappers’ Corner: Planned Parenthood's Secret Relocation

Baby's Day Out

Childbirth goes solo.

Life of the Party

For drunk CU students, SEMS volunteers lend a helping hand.

Of Meth and Men

The drug fuels gay parties -- but the party was almost over before Rod finally found help.

The Fag Party's Over

Butt seriously, folks, it's lights out for smokers.

Exit This Way

Denver lies dead center in the right-to-die debate.