8 JANUARY 11-17, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | property valuations. While Kaiser says his agreement was honored, other growers have taken Hiatt to court. Hiatt could not be reached for comment, but the empty properties speak for themselves. “I thought we were going to get rich,” recalls Nathaniel Eaton, co-owner of out- door pot operation Stargazer Farms, which started in Ordway in 2020. Instead, says the former electrician and sales professional, “back when prices were at their worst, we had to take money out of the bank to survive. We’re going to keep going as long as we can.” Humble Farms, another growing opera- tion in Ordway, had more experience and tempered expectations after its fi rst harvest in 2019. But that foresight hasn’t given father- son team Jon and Ben McIntosh a much rosier outlook. “We got a good fi rst year under our belt, and prices were pretty good until around September 2021. That’s when they started crashing. We’re glad to still be here and have seen some recovery, but when you drive around here, it’s a ghost town,” Jon McIntosh says. He had a $6 million expansion mapped out for Humble Farms in 2021, but “that plan worked at $1,500 a pound, not $500.” And even if cannabis prices reach their past glory for growers, he’s worried that “everyone will jump back in again,” he says. “We were told that if you build it, the Philip Morrises of the world would come in and buy us out for millions. Some lots sold for as high as $400,000 out here at one point,” McIntosh adds. “I still think there are people who believe if they get in the marijuana business, they’ll be rich. There are still some suckers out there.” Colorado doesn’t have any statewide limits on the number of cannabis businesses, although local governments are allowed to enact them. Until the supply comes down enough to meet demand, Kaiser and the McIntoshes would like to see a licensing limit on new growers at the state level. Reas- sessing Colorado’s current 15 percent excise tax and licensing fee structure as more states go online with more competitive tax rates is also a conversation they’d like to see started, but they’re not as optimistic about that one. Still, there are smaller issues that could be addressed and save growers big money, they argue. Colorado requires that tracking tags, at an estimated cost of 45 to 70 cents per tag, be placed on each plant, with most cultivations having thousands of plants at any given point. The MED has promised to look into new tracking rules that could heav- ily cut back on the number of tags needed, but such a move wouldn’t take place until next year at the earliest. “What other industry has to pay 15 per- cent off the top?” McIntosh asks. “I think it’s time to rethink how this industry is regulated, or Colorado is going to fall behind the rest of the country.” Despite the downturn, Colorado’s ten years of legalized cannabis have brought plenty of benefi ts, according to Tvert, who’s advised cannabis advocates and policy writers in other states since 2014. He’s proud of the marijuana criminal justice reform Colorado helped kickstart, and points to the consider- able amount of marijuana tax revenue the state has collected since 2014, currently at around $2.6 billion. With over half of the country’s population located in states that now have recreational dispensaries, however, Tvert thinks it might be time to have some “honest conversations” about Colorado’s pot policies and cannabis tax structure, including that 15 percent excise tax on every pound growers produce for recre- ational sales, and dispensary sales taxes rang- ing from around 20 to 30 percent, depending on the local government’s additional rates. The state tax rates were put in place over ten years ago, shortly after Amendment 64 passed. “I certainly think we saw some questionable decision-making in terms of planning around these taxes and the assump- tion that the money would only grow. I also think we’ve seen a tendency to look toward the cannabis industry as a tax revenue piggy bank that it was never intended to be,” Tvert says. “The idea was to have reasonable taxes that would cover the cost of regulations while also bringing some benefi t to localities allowing these businesses as well as the rest of the state. There are a lot of conversations that need to take place around interstate commerce and what’s needed to grow, and some of that has already started.” After receiving a favorable recommenda- tion from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Drug Enforcement Administration is currently considering the rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, which could legalize the plant on a limited federal basis; Senator John Hick- enlooper and Governor Jared Polis say they expect the DEA to approve the rescheduling at some point in 2024. If and when that happens, Colorado “still has the ability to be among the leading states” in cannabis culture, Tvert says, but whether state lawmakers want it is debatable, he adds. “Oregon still wants it. Does Colorado have the most effective or effi cient cannabis laws? Not necessarily, although it does in some areas, but it has been the fi rst to have these discussions,” Tvert points out. “Even in areas it’s not leading on, like social use, Colorado was still the fi rst to initiate those conversations. Cannabis is widely available here, yet for some reason it’s still being kept out of the cultural fabric of the state, and that is to its detriment.” Like Tvert, Azzariti hopes to see state lawmakers change with the times as mari- juana becomes more mainstream — and part of that change should address the lack of cannabis-friendly venues and events in Colorado. “Around 2017, when they stopped allow- ing cannabis cups and cannabis-friendly events in Denver, I think that really hurt the cannabis tourism here and cut down on people wanting to visit Colorado to experi- ence legal cannabis,” Azzariti says. “It defi - nitely hurt the culture. We still don’t have a place for people to go, and that’s what really hurts us. Their options are to smoke weed in their hotel rooms, rental cars or go on a hike.” While pot-friendly events and venues might help overall demand in Colorado, dispensaries still managed to sell over $2 billion worth of marijuana products in 2021 and 2022, and the state’s annual tally for 2023 is expected to break $1.5 billion. That’s a lot of money for a fl ailing industry, and someone has to make it. Why not a county where the only employers of note are public and private prisons, and the largest town barely breaks the 1,000-population mark? “If we get fi ve good years and put $5 million in the county’s bank account, that’s a win for us. And then we have to look for a Plan B or C, whatever is next for us,” says former Crowley County commissioner Tobe Allumbaugh. “We’re about to be there, but marijuana has been very good for the county fi nancially, just — like the rest of the state — not as good as it used to be.” Now the county’s cannabis business liai- son, Allumbaugh pushed for Crowley County to allow marijuana businesses in 2016. And even if that industry ultimately falls fl at, he views it as a fi nancial victory for the rural communities that embraced it. “Starting off with the license, and then you have the excise tax, and then you have license renewal, the sales tax on the utili- ties and property taxes. When you add all that together, it’s pretty good. Even if they don’t grow, they have to buy a license, and property tax never goes away,” he says. “Col- lectively, that’s pretty nice for a place the size of Crowley County.” Nice while it lasted. It takes about fifty minutes to drive east to Ordway from Pueblo, where Kaiser and much of the town’s marijuana work- force live. During the commute, they pass a gated lot on State Highway 96 where North America’s largest outdoor marijuana cultivation used to sit. Vacant since early 2023, Los Sueños Farms was most recently owned by cor- porate cannabis giant Curaleaf, which has essentially abandoned Colorado for business. Colorado isn’t the only state that Curaleaf and other publicly traded pot companies are leaving, but the current market is less attrac- tive to big money — not that it’s very attrac- tive to small money at the moment, either. “I’ve put real blood, sweat and tears into this. This is not a spreadsheet, and I have employees who depend on me. People don’t know how hard it is to stay afl oat in canna- bis,” Kaiser says. “There is no glamour right now. This is one hard fuckin’ job.” Email the author at thomas.mitchell@ westword.com. High and Dry continued from page 6 THOMAS MITCHELL Vacated growing operations and struggling cannabis farms are easy to fi nd in Ordway these days. THOMAS MITCHELL
