Postcard from Denver

Few states have embraced medical marijuana as enthusiastically as Colorado. But as dispensaries proliferate, lawmakers are cracking down. Gone to pot and back again

David Walter Banks / Luceo

Jars of medical marijuana on display in a Colorado dispensary.

Walk into the basement showroom of the Colorado Patient Coalition, a marijuana dispensary located in a small medical plaza on the northern outskirts of Denver, and your nostrils fill with the same pungent odor that once stank up your college roommate's underwear drawer. But the visual cues are at odds with the Steppenwolf playing on the sound system: a uniformed security guard leans by the door, while grass is displayed in neatly labeled jars under glass. Along one wall is a large, horizontal one-way window, behind which, one assumes, are eyes sharper and brighter than those of the clerks and customers.

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