6 westword.com WESTWORD APRIL 16-22, 2026 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Smoke Alarm COLORADO CANNABIS IS UNDER FIRE AS PROFITS AND PERFORMANCE STUMBLE. BY THOMAS MITC HELL Step inside a Colorado dispensary today, and you’ll see more options than ever before: vapes and pre-rolls of all shapes and sizes, every fl avor of THC gummy you can imagine, jars full of hash, bottles of infused drinks and lotions. But actual weed? That sticky, icky stuff you break apart and smoke? It used to be stickier, ickier and produced with more passion — and less mold remedia- tion. Just ask the people who grow it, sell it and smoke it. Past the Peak Few people in Colorado have smelled or seen more varieties of legal weed than Spencer Laster. In 2015, the year after recreational sales began in Colorado, he started working for what would become one of the state’s largest dispensary chains, LivWell Enlight- ened Health; he’s been budtending ever since. A consumer of cannabis since 2012, Laster now works at the Herbal Cure, a mom-and-pop dispensary in south Denver. “Cannabis helped me be able to center and ground myself. I also like to make music and tie-dye, and it’s been a great use for that creatively,” says the longtime pot purveyor. “I would say I care greatly about the quality: how it’s grown, how it’s cured.” Laster isn’t looking for the most expen- sive weed, just something with personality, from a grower he can trust. While he’s proud of the Herbal Cure’s selection and in-house cultivation, Laster doesn’t have the same confi dence in the majority of Colorado’s stores and growers. “Everybody is in a race to the bottom. It’s all cured the same and meant to be super- affordable, but it all looks and smells the same. It doesn’t feel like people are growing what they actually like to grow anymore,” he says. “It just seems like everybody is in competition to sell something even cheaper, which drives less quality...then you have pesticides, regulations and everyone growing the same thing.” Laster’s not saying this out of bitterness or generational superiority, and Colorado is not without talented and honest cannabis growers and dispensary owners. But com- mercialization, economic trends and the inevitable burst of Colorado’s once-unique bubble have turned the state’s cannabis industry into a scene fi lled with single-use vapes and strains that sound more like candy and ice cream fl avors, from Animal Cookies to Zkittlez. Denver dispensaries used to be stocked with strains that had diverse fl avor pro- fi les and told stories of regional pride, like Colorado Cough (a Fort Collins specialty) and Ghost Train Haze, which won Denver grower Scott Reach a High Times Cannabis Cup-winning strain in the 2010s...back when it still meant something. But both strains are true sativas, which often take ten to twelve weeks to fully ma- ture before harvest. Business owners soon realized that keeping strains to eight weeks was more profi table, and dumped the time- intensive Coughs and Hazes. Even Sour Die- sel and OG Kush, once the standard bearers of American cannabis, are diffi cult to fi nd in Colorado nowadays, because they take a few weeks longer to grow and don’t produce the large yields of newer varieties bred for commercial production; growers who do keep those genetics alive will harvest a few weeks early to keep production on schedule. If you do come across a true representa- tion of Colorado Cough, Nick Johnson would love to document it. He’s been a full-time photographer of Colorado cannabis since 2019, and spent years as a medical mari- juana caregiver and grower before that. Like Laster, he fi nds dispensary fl ower lacking innovation and gusto. “There always seems to be something with Cookies or Gelato in the name. Some of those Chem and OG strains from the earlier years, stuff that was not easy to grow from a production standpoint, it’s hard to fi nd those now. The true expressions of those strains re- ally don’t come out until the last few weeks,” he says. “There is a lot of low and mid-tier cannabis, and very little top-shelf making it into dispensaries right now.” The decline isn’t just anecdotal. A handful of recent studies and reports have quantifi ed just how questionable Colorado cannabis can be. What’s On My Weed? A 2025 Colorado Public Radio report show- cased test results for fifteen dispensary products; four of them contained levels of yeast and mold that would have failed state testing limits. The tests also found chemical components of pesticides and other forms of bacteria, according to CPR. Earlier this year, a joint project between Pro Publica and the Denver Gazette offered evidence that THC extracted from hemp, which is banned in Colorado and not part of the licensed market, had been used in the manufacture of vape products sold in dis- pensaries. At least three Colorado cannabis businesses were suspended or ceased opera- tion after Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) offi cials found evidence of hemp-derived THC in their products, the project reported. Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder have shown that many THC po- tency percentages given for retail cannabis products are infl ated or misstated. In 2025, Colorado cannabis testing facility RM3 Labs was fi ned $250,000 and lost its license after MED and state Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE) investigators con- cluded the lab was infl ating potency data, among other violations. “A large majority of companies are after price point and potency. I hear it from the cultivators, too: No matter how good the strain smells, if they can’t get it above 20 percent THC, then it’s not going to sell. Dispensaries won’t NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Cannabis plants hang-dry inside of Veritas Fine Cannabis, a cultivation that closed in 2024. MONIKA SWIDERSKI SCOTT LETNZ
