News continued from page 8 their offi cial caregivers. This created the early dispensary scene in Colorado, which eventually turned into the vast cannabis market we have today. College Days Colorado’s connection to pot wouldn’t be where it is now if institutions of higher learning had never gotten involved. In 1965, a Rocky Mountain News article relayed the shock of realizing how many students at the University of Colorado Boulder were using cannabis, and how easy it was to fi nd on cam- pus. A few years later, the News reported that 67 percent of students at Colorado College favored cannabis legalization. And sometime around 2000, 35 years after the News shared its dismay with the amount of pot on the CU campus, the school briefl y became the state’s cultural center for cannabis. That’s when CU students began holding public smokeouts at Farrand Field on April 20, the unoffi cial cannabis holiday known as 4/20. In 2003, there were nearly 1,000 people on the fi eld, and attendance continued to grow despite public discouragement from university offi cials. In 2005, the school began turning on sprinklers around 4:20 p.m., wa- tering the lawn and protesters. The year after that, photos of 4/20 crowd members were posted online by CU police, with fi nancial rewards offered for identifi cation of students on the fi eld. None of that discouraged the unoffi cial holiday. The acts of defi ance created enough mo- mentum for Denver-based Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) to intro- duce and successfully pass measures at CU and Colorado State University that made To celebrate the award, CU took a harder stance against 4/20, applying smelly fertilizer to the lawn in 2012 and shut- ting down the area en- tirely in 2013. The CU 4/20 celebration hasn’t returned since, but its presence — and photos — will always be a part of the state’s journey. Denver Decriminalization Building on the suc- cess of the resolutions passed at CU and CSU, SAFER set its sights on Colorado’s largest city and cannabis capital: Denver. The effort was much more of a sprint than a marathon, with SAFER able to get a can- nabis decriminalization initiative on the local bal- lot in 2005, the same year the organization was victorious at Colorado’s two largest universities. The measure, which decriminalized pos- session of an ounce of pot for anyone 21 and older, was opposed by then-Mayor John Hickenlooper and the Denver Post’s editorial board, while a Westword article stated that the measure was “mostly symbolic” and “simply reinforced the state’s 1975 decriminalization laws.” However, the symbolism was strong after 54 percent of voters approved the move, with Denver hailed as the fi rst major city to le- galize cannabis across the nation. Whether the tangible impact was big or not, Denver’s Mile High reputation was set for years to come. Legal pot’s evolution has led to a thriving industry in Colorado. weed sessions — the annual gathering at Civic Center Park is now one of the world’s largest, drawing tens of thousands. Denver’s connection to 4/20 is largely thanks to cannabis activist Ken Gorman, who began hosting monthly “smoke-in” protests at Civic Center Park in 1995 before eventually turning it into a full-fl edged rally on April 20. From there, it grew into the pot party it is today. “At fi rst the city nailed him for not having an event permit, so we went through that bullshit permitting process every month. There were other crazy things he’d do to get in trouble, and various ways we’d try to avoid it. We’d fi ll bongs with wax so they weren’t technically us- able,” Warren Edson, Gorman’s attorney, re- members. “These were the days when they were all ‘water pipes’ and ‘for tobacco use only.’ Even- tually, all of this turned into the 4/20 event.” Gorman was mur- Sean Azzariti makes Colorado’s fi rst legal recreational marijuana purchase at Denver’s 3D Cannabis Center on January 1, 2014 cannabis-related penalties no worse than penalties for alcohol offenses on campus. In the following years, CU’s 4/20 presence grew larger — and so did the pushback. In 2007, a barricade was erected around 10 Farrand Field, so students held their 4/20 smokeout at Norlin Quad, where it remained for several years. The size of the event grew to 10,000 people, helping earn CU’s top ranking in Playboy’s party schools of 2011. Denver’s 4/20 Connection Big celebrations for 4/20 have been a mainstay in Denver for more than two de- cades, before the city decriminalized pot or Colorado legalized medical marijuana. Although the 4/20 concept didn’t start in Denver — the origin story dates back to 1971 in Marin County, California, where a group of high school friends used 4:20 as their regular meetup time for after-school dered in 2007 (the case remains open and un- solved), but his friends continued the tradition of gathering at the park, hosting what became the 4/20 Rally in Denver at Civic Center Park from 2007 to 2017. The event focused on advocacy and politics in the early years, but slowly turned into more of a festival and celebration as Colorado’s pot industry evolved. The free 4/20 rallies and festivals at Civic Center, though permitted by the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation, have never been licensed for public pot use, and police hand out a hefty number of citations to stoners straggling too far from the herd. Euflora, a Denver-based dispensary chain, took over the Civic Center event permit for April 20 in 2018 from previous holder and Gorman disciple Miguel Lopez, after Lopez ran into opposition from the city over operating and cleanup issues following the 2017 event. After a two-year hiatus be- cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 4/20 celebration at Civic Center, now dubbed the Mile High 420 Festival, is set to return this year with a free party and concert on Wednesday, April 20 — and one ridiculously large plume of smoke. Amendment 64 Cannabis advocates tried to legalize pos- session statewide in the 2006 election, but Initiative 44 barely got 41 percent of the vote. Six years later, however, Amendment 64 passed easily — tying with Washington’s Initiative 502 as the fi rst statewide measure approved by voters to legalize and regulate recreational cannabis. Governor John Hick- enlooper made the vote offi cial in December 2012, beating Washington, and making Colo- rado the fi rst state to offi cially legalize pot. There were several legalization initiatives brewing in 2011, but SAFER founder Mason Tvert and cannabis attorney Brian Vicente’s Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alco- hol won out in the end. The constitutional amendment, which drew over 55 percent of the vote in 2012, allowed people 21 and older in Colorado to possess up to 1 ounce of cannabis (a law passed in 2021 increased possession to 2 ounces), as well as grow up to six plants of their own. The law also al- lowed towns to enact licensing systems for recreational marijuana stores, with tax rates and industry regulation later set up through the state legislature and the new Marijuana Enforcement Division over the next year in anticipation of a January 1, 2014, start date. Many criticisms leveled at Amendment 64 by cannabis advocates before the vote still exist today, including sales limits on cannabis, strict social consumption laws, a lack of em- ployee protection for off-hour marijuana use and the prohibition of fi rearm ownership for medical marijuana patients. Amendment 64 was also called out for not having carveouts for social equity entrepreneurs from com- munities impacted by the War on Drugs, an issue that local and state governments didn’t APRIL 14-20, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com JACQUELINE COLLINS BRANDON MARSHALL
