It’s now legal to buy pot in two different ways in Colorado. You can get clearance to use it for medicinal purposes, or you can just go to a dispensary and buy your pot and pay sales and other taxes along the way.
BuzzFeed reports that many in Colorado are just keeping on buying their pot illegally.
But some people like Mario, a 31-year-old graduate student who works part-time at a restaurant, are still turning to the black market for their weed.
Sitting in a vegetarian café near his Denver apartment that has a bathroom covered in graffiti like “Urban Farming Is The Future!”, Mario said he feared being on a medical registry while still in school.
A lifelong Colorado resident, Mario, a slight man with glasses and a goatee, who asked that his last name to be withheld, has yet to step foot in a dispensary. That’s because he can get an ounce of weed for $60 from a coworker whose family member has a home grow. Granted, that’s an unusually low price, as high-quality green generally costs an average of $237 an ounce, according to priceofweed.com, a self-described “global price index for marijuana.”
Purchased legally, without a medical card, that same amount would put him out around $400.
“I’m afraid that information could get somehow compromised,” he said about his fears of his loans being affected by being on a medical registry. “The last thing I’d want is to get my federal funding cut off.”
Heaven forbid.
On the other hand, Mario’s fear of getting on any government list makes sense and should be encouraged.
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