A former Boulder banker convicted in 2010, sentenced to prison and placed on the hook for $11.9 million in restitution to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for bank fraud in the collapse of BestBank in 1998 has been judged, along with his son and two companies, to be at fault in a case involving the disappearance of a hemp crop.

In a case decided in Denver District Court in January 2020 and affirmed by the Colorado Court of Appeals on Sept. 9, Thomas Alan Boyd, along with others, was determined to be liable for securities fraud, untrue statements, a scheme to defraud, false representation, nondisclosure and concealment and negligent misrepresentation.

Medical and retail marijuana sales fell in August for the second consecutive year, while the state's tax and fee revenue also declined, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue's September report. 

Prior to last year, marijuana sales throughout the month of August had continuously increased from the previous month since 2014, according to the report. 

Throughout the month of August, $192 million worth marijuana was sold across the Centennial State, which is a decrease of over $9.9 million or nearly 5% from July. Likewise, this August's overall sales were nearly 12% lower than in 2020, according to the report. 

Marijuana enforcement officials, city council members, and citizens all came together to discuss marijuana sales in the city, the timeline, and the economic impact at the 5th annual Western Colorado Economic Summit at the Grand Junction Convention Center on Thursday. City Council member, Abe Herman says, “Things we’ve come to consensus on is the cap of the number stores which is ten stores throughout the city. We have agreement from council on that, and the other item is the selection process for those ten stores which is a weighted lottery.”

Brookline’s budding marijuana industry is proving lucrative for the town: Since fiscal year 2017, marijuana retailers have paid out more than $4.7 million in community impact revenue, plus an additional $3 million from sales taxes. 

The local pot industry began with Brookline Village’s New England Treatment Access, which opened the town’s first medical marijuana dispensary in 2016, following it up with the introduction of adult-use marijuana in March 2019.

Coolidge Corner’s Sanctuary Medicinals followed in August 2020, and Mission MA opened its Commonwealth Avenue location in August this year. Both Sanctuary and Mission offer only recreational marijuana.

CBD of Denver, Inc. (OTC Pink: CBDD), a full-line CBD and hemp oil company and a producer and distributor of cannabis and CBD products in Switzerland and Europe, comments on Italy's cannabis decriminalization referendum, which received the required 500,000+ signatures well ahead of the September 30 deadline to be included in the country's 2022 vote.

"This is another important milestone in the ongoing legalization trend sweeping across Europe," commented Marcel Gamma, CEO of CBD of Denver. "Our Rockflowr business already works with several clients in Italy, and we are well positioned to capitalize on a favorable vote by Italy's citizenry in 2022."

Seed & Smith has launched a new collaboration for cannabis and music lovers, partnering with Colorado band Big Gigantic to release limited-edition THC cartridges for the company's popular line of Dart vaporizer pods.

A brand encompassing dispensaries, in-house cannabis cultivation and extracted products, Seed & Smith has worked with a handful of musicians and artists over the years, but chief operating officer Brooks Lustig is particularly excited about the Big Gigantic project.

“The one thing that was exciting about this one is the fact that Big Gigantic wanted to do something that was for charity, that could help out the situation here in Colorado,” Lustig says of the Boulder-based musical duo.

A Denver-based medical marijuana company has awarded $1,000 scholarships to twenty different college students interested in the plant, with plans to do the same next year.

Veriheal, an online service that connects medical marijuana patients with doctors, recently split $20,000 among twenty students who demonstrated a passion for cannabis and innovative ideas to better the industry through essay submissions. The lone Colorado winner was Christina Hippensteel, a student at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

When Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, it didn't have a playbook.

While the state worked out the early rules regarding sales and taxation, it didn't initially consider how years of marijuana criminalization had impacted historically marginalized communities, and whether those communities should get special access to opportunities in the cannabis industry. (As originally posted on Westword by HILAL BAHCETEPE)

Colorado voters will decide in November whether to hike pot taxes to boost funding for out-of-school learning programs.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office announced last week supporters of Initiative 25, titled the Learning Enrichment and Academic Progress Program, are projected to have gathered enough signatures to clear the threshold to qualify for the ballot.

Supporters of the so-called LEAP measure needed 124,632 valid signatures to qualify and submitted a total of 203,335 petition signatures. After reviewing a 5% random sample of the submitted signatures, the Elections Division is projecting Initiative 25 garnered just over 145,000 valid signatures.