Denver City Council Will Vote on Moving Dispensary Closing Time to 10 p.m.

Denver City Council will vote on extending dispensary hours until 10 p.m.

April 5, 2017

Some beautiful late-night strains, courtesy of Headquarters in Lyons. Scott Lentz

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Denver has come a step closer to allowing late-night dispensaries.

Under state law, dispensaries can stay open until midnight, as they do in Edgewater and Glendale. For the last several months, Denver City Council's special marijuana committee has discussed extending those hours. At a meeting on April 3, councilmembers settled on 10 p.m. as a closing time, which mirrors Aurora rules, and moved the proposal to the full council.

Dispensary owners have been hoping for a change for some time, but later closing times became more important last November, when Denver voters approved Initiative 300, which will allow the public consumption of marijuana. Venues will begin applying for social-use permits later this summer.

Not only would later hours work better for those venues, but they might cut back on black-market activities, councilmembers said at the committee meeting. But at the urging of dispensary neighbors, they set closing time at 10 p.m. rather than midnight.

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Kate McKee Simmons interned at the National Catholic Reporter, was a reporter for the New York Post, and spent a brief stint in Israel learning international reporting before writing for Westword.

Contact: Kate McKee Simmons

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