The city council in Longmont, Colorado voted 4-2 (with one council member absent) to ban recreational marijuana businesses and 6-0 to ban private cannabis clubs. Opponents of the ban reminded council members that 58% of Longmont voted for Amendment 64 and that full regulations aren’t even in place yet.
Categories: Best of the Web, Cannabusiness, Law & Politics, Marijuana News
Tags: amendment 64, ban, colorado, recreational.
By:
Zeke Becker. Permalink: 
Shortlink: http://weedi.st/kyNNZ
Tags: amendment 64, ban, colorado, recreational.
By:
Zeke Becker. Permalink: Shortlink: http://weedi.st/kyNNZ
A tale of two cities… Longmont wants to ban clubs and cannabis businesses before they are even legal, as do some suburbs of Denver, while on the same day, another article in Weedist says the Seattle city attorney (with the mayor's blessing) is asking the WA liquor control board (that controls cannabis in WA) to ALLOW private cannabis clubs and to ENCOURAGE home delivery of cannabis in Seattle.
Its fascinating how WA and CO officials are working in parallel yet often coming up with very different mechanisms. So far, WA seems a lot more open to cannabis outlets and businesses, even through CO has a big head start in commercial grow operations. Hopefully Denver will decide to operate as openly as Seattle wants to.
This is the kind of competition I LIKE… seeing which state and cities can bring us the best environment for enjoying legal cannabis. Methinks there are some serious tourism dollars up for grabs starting in early 2014, especially if either city can truly bring us the Coffeeshop environment of Amsterdam (Seattle has more or less the same weather as Amsterdam, for what that's worth.)
Given I live in the Seattle area, I'm rooting for the home team, but would love to see two winners to this competition.
Even stranger, in the Netherlands, the southern city of Maastricht is cracking down on local coffee shops: /quicklink/dutch-city-crack…
While their high court in the Hague is asking the city to pay damages to those establishments for limiting their business :/quicklink/bbc-dutch-cannabis-cafes-coffee-shops-win-compensation/
I'm also routing for the home team, hoping that Colorado and Washington both have very successful recreational cannabis programs that California can adopt. 2 things bum me out about Washington's approach: no concentrates and no personal growing. Don't get me wrong, it's a HUGE step forward, but it kind of takes the "craft-brew" folks out of the loop. Though I guess you can still grow if you have an MMJ card?