1. Colorado recreational marijuana store eye
opening to baby boomers
FEBRUARY 7, 2015, 5:59 PM
Barbara Brotman
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
blbrotman@chicagotribune.com
T he prospect of medical marijuana for sale in your Illinois neighborhood may
seem unreal.
But for a truly mind-blowing experience, even without trying the wares, consider a
glimpse at the next step on the legalization continuum: its sale for recreational use.
The recreational use of pot became legal in Colorado in 2014. Which means that a ski
vacation there now offers an additional kind of adventure.
On our recent ski trip to Telluride with friends, my adult daughter proposed that we
take a look. Not necessarily a taste; her drug of choice is a gin martini. But why waste
an opportunity, she asked, to see a legal marijuana store?
And so we found ourselves walking up to the second floor of a quiet commercial
building and into Alpine Wellness, a medical and recreational marijuana center.
We showed our IDs — customers must be 21 or older — and were shown into the
retail store.
I gaped.
Shelves of marijuana-infused cookies and candies, jars of marijuana buds, packs of
lozenges called Chill Pills — there was a cornucopia of marijuana products, all on
display in glass cases and labeled with price and THC content.
There was Ganjala, Alpine Wellness' signature flavored caramels, named after the
Telluride gondola and available in flavors like black cherry, orange and strawberry
lemonade. Each package — single-serving and childproof, as required by law —
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2. contains 10 mg of active THC, the recommended single dosage, and costs $3.
There were Terrapin Turtle Bites — chocolate-covered caramels with pecans. There
were peanut butter chocolate chip cookies; oatmeal, nut and raisin cookies;
gluten-free apricot almond cookies.
There were rows of glass jars of bud, emitting the sweet scent of my high school
bedroom and bearing names like Jabberwocky (32.07 percent THC) and Pineapple
Skunk ( 23.33 percent THC). The prices were posted on the wall: a quarter of an
ounce was $90; a 1-gram joint was $10. Tax was included.
Cheerfully explaining to his Chicago-area visitors the difference between the indica
and sativa varieties was Chicago-area native Michael Grady, 29, co-owner of Alpine
Wellness. Grady is a snowboard technician turned ganjapreneur.
"Indica is more relaxing; sativa is more stimulating; and hybrid is a balance of the
two," said Grady, who before moving to Telluride was an EMT in the emergency room
of Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital.
He showed off the new line of KOTO cookies — the company donates 10 percent of
the proceeds to Telluride's community radio station, KOTO — and the also-new
chocolate-covered Peppermint Fatties.
He talked about the business of marijuana, the manufacturing process, the
importance of vertical integration. Alpine Wellness built and operates a grow facility
and a commercial kitchen; sells its Ganjala in 20 shops around Colorado; and
employs 20 people full time.
It also pays the state about $20,000 a month in sales and excise tax revenue, Grady
said, and about $15,000 a year for state licensing.
Over at the counter, a middle-aged man was mulling his order.
"I'll try the blue raspberry (Ganjala)," he told Sarah Schwab, a bud tender who also
handles sales, "and whatever else you think is delicious."
It was all so matter-of-fact, so open, so — legal. We might have been tasting cabernet
sauvignon instead of sniffing OG Kush.
My baby boomer mind reeled.
Baby boomer minds tend to do that at first.
"The baby boomers, they're the ones that are most excited," Grady said.
"I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said, 'I can't believe this happened in my
lifetime,'" Schwab said.
The young staffers delight in their midlife customers and their old-school references
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3. Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune
to "smoking a number."
Still, one 48-year-old Colorado man confessed to mixed feelings about legal
marijuana stores.
"As much as I like it, you don't want to see them springing up everywhere," he said.
"Not to be a hypocrite, but you don't want to see a liquor store on every corner
either."
On the other hand, a 62-year-old Florida businessman here on a ski trip had no
ambivalence. He said he hopes other states legalize recreational use too. If Florida
does, he mused, "It would be nice to have a (marijuana) store in retirement."
Legal marijuana doesn't look like this everywhere, said Art Goodtimes, an aptly
named San Miguel County commissioner I called to ask about other stores.
Goodtimes supported the ballot initiative decriminalizing cannabis and was Alpine
Wellness' first customer when it opened for recreational marijuana sales Jan. 1, 2014.
Some Colorado towns outlawed the sale of marijuana within their borders, he said.
Some stores in larger cities in eastern Colorado have armed guards and considerably
less relaxed atmospheres.
But in Telluride, which hosts an annual mushroom festival, "it's just normal," he said.
Which, after the initial shock, was how it looked to me.
Yes, it looked unbelievable at first glance. But gay marriage once looked unbelievable
too.
And if I can buy a glass of pinot grigio without fear of arrest or violence, why
shouldn't people be able to buy a bud of OG Pure?
And how was the Ganjala, anyway?
Alas, legal marijuana is wasted, so to speak, on me. My youthful stoner self would
weep to hear it, but weed now makes me paranoid.
I was tempted to buy some anyway on principle, if only to see if I could get away with
putting a gram of Pineapple Skunk on my Tribune expense account. But in the end, I
left Alpine Wellness empty-handed.
Several of my ski buddies, however, assured me that the store's product was primo.
A glimpse of legal, tax-revenue producing marijuana wasn't bad either.
blbrotman@tribpub.com
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