Is this what would happen if cannabis was legal in Britain? Suicides, killings and toddlers in hospital with overdoses - TOM LEONARD visits Colorado, where marijuana has just been legalised

Peter Williams says he can make $ 1billion in three years g rowing the dr ug

Drug baron is trying to make his business into 'McDonald's of marijuana'

Since January 1, more than 200 dispensaries have been set up in Denver



Peter Williams waves a hand regally over a sea of dazzling green that seems to stretch off into infinity. These are the marijuana plants — room after brightly lit room of them — that have suddenly made him a very rich man.

I don’t need to inhale any of the stuff to get light-headed over the figures he quotes me.

Using high-pressure sodium lights to grow a more potent product, he produces some 6,000lb of ‘weed’ every year which he sells for anything between £1,770 and £3,000 a pound.

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Growth: Since January 1, more than 200 licensed marijuana 'dispensaries' in Denver, Colorado's biggest city - along with 100 more in other parts of the state

That’s potentially as much as £18 million a year . . . until he finishes a giant greenhouse which will produce an annual additional 20,000lb.

He and his partners — his brother and their mother — have just agreed contracts with businesses in Chicago and Las Vegas to export their production techniques there if and when cannabis legalisation spreads.

‘A year from now, we’ll be worth $300 million, in three years, $1 billion,’ grins the former tile setter. It’s not often that a wildly successful drug baron offers to take you on a guided tour of his business but the co-proprietor of Medicine Man is out to establish his business as the ‘McDonald’s of marijuana’.

There may be an armed guard at the entrance, but this outfit, situated in a large warehouse on an industrial estate just 20 minutes from Denver Airport, is completely legitimate.

Since January 1, more than 200 licensed marijuana ‘dispensaries’ in Denver, Colorado’s biggest city — along with 100 more in other parts of the state — have been allowed to sell the drug to anyone aged 21 and over for purely ‘recreational’ rather than medicinal use.

The controversial change, the result of a referendum in the U.S. state, was driven through by younger, liberal-minded voters who shared a ‘live and let live’ mentality and a feeling that existing drug laws unfairly targeted black people.

... Since January 1, more than 200 licensed marijuana ‘dispensaries’ in Denver, Colorado’s biggest city — along with 100 more in other parts of the state

It is a world first — even Amsterdam never actually legalised marijuana but simply decriminalised possessing a small amount. The rest of the globe — including Britain and many other U.S. states — is watching this experiment in the Rocky Mountains with keen interest.

Nick Clegg has backed moves to ‘partially decriminalise the sale of cannabis’ and he has plenty of supporters in the celebrity world, including Russell Brand, Richard Branson, Sting and Joan Bakewell.

In the U.S., Barack Obama — who liked to get stoned as a teenager — recently gave his support to the Colorado initiative even though it meant contradicting his own drugs advisers.

But as I discovered in Denver this week, five months in, this shoddily handled experiment should give serious pause for thought to those in Britain who want a cannabis joint to be as freely available as a pint of beer.

Mr Williams — who is both a licensed producer and dispenser — shows me his store where glass cases and racks are filled with pretty much every ingestible or smokeable form of marijuana you can think of.

As well as bags of some two dozen different varieties of dried marijuana buds with names such as Girl Scout Cookie and Alien Dawg, you can buy biscuits, chewy sweets, soft drinks and chocolate truffles — all laced with marijuana.

For around £14, you can buy more than enough to get high. A single chocolate chip cookie is so strong it comes with a warning to cut it into four parts before eating.

When I point out that the sweets and biscuits look and smell so identical to the ordinary variety that no adult or child could tell them apart, Williams gives me a weary shrug. ‘It all comes down to personal responsibility,’ he says.

'McDonald's of marijuana': Producing cannabis has become a muilti-million dollar industry in Colorado since it was legalised

That is typical of responses from those involved in this burgeoning sector, which has rapidly shown itself to be ruthlessly cynical and commercial, targeting teenagers and already responsible for a string of deaths.

Overawed by the millions of extra dollars in revenue — licensed dispensaries pay a hefty 36.2 per cent in tax — that Colorado receives from legal cannabis dealers, the state’s leaders appear to be turning a blind eye to the terrible repercussions of legalising the drug.

In March, a 19-year-old Congolese exchange student threw himself off a Denver hotel balcony as a result of the new policy. Levy Pongi — who had never taken the drug before — and three friends had eaten some legally bought marijuana-infused biscuits.

Mr Pongi started tearing around the room and pulling pictures off the wall. A coroner said the drug had made a ‘significant’ contribution to his tragic death.

In April, edible marijuana was again blamed for the murder of a middle-class Denver housewife. Kristine Kirk had rung the police emergency number in terror to say her husband, Richard, had been consuming ginger-flavoured cannabis candy. She said he was hallucinating and ‘talking like it was the end of the world’. As she spoke, her husband found his gun and shot her dead in front of their three children.

... For around £14, you can buy more than enough to get high. A single chocolate chip cookie is so strong it comes with a warning to cut it into four parts before eating

Ominously, federal drug agencies say Colombian drug cartels are now moving into Colorado’s marijuana business and using the legal trade as a front to sell cannabis to other states where it is still are banned, as well as other harder drugs.

On the roads, meanwhile, state police have noted a sharp increase in stoned drivers being stopped for dangerous driving.

Under Colorado law, anyone aged 21 and over can legally possess up to an ounce of marijuana and it can be sold only by the officially authorised dispensaries.

But, because of the 36.2 per cent tax levied by the state on cannabis sold through these dispensaries, it can be obtained cheaper on the black market, which some licensed producers are secretly supplying.

As Lieutenant Mark Comte of the narcotics enforcement unit in the city of Colorado Springs explains, legalisation has boosted illegal drug dealing: ‘If you can

get it tax-free on the corner, you’re going to get it on the corner.’

At the same time, he says, police find it impossible to distinguish between legal and illegally produced marijuana, making it extremely hard to prosecute criminals. And when cases do manage to reach court, juries are ‘so confused by the law’ that they generally acquit anyone in the dock, he says.

Meanwhile, he adds, quality control on marijuana is non-existent. ‘Unlike, say, a bottle of liquor, there are no guarantees on production, growing and testing. You can’t believe anything you read on the labels.’

Indeed, the problem with not knowing what you’re taking has been highlighted in the past few days by Maureen Dowd, a liberal columnist at the New York Times.

Dowd revealed how she had tried a marijuana chocolate bar in her Denver hotel room. After taking just two nibbles, ‘I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain,’ she wrote.

‘I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.’ She added: ‘As my paranoia deepened, I had become convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.’

The following morning, a marijuana expert told her she had eaten far too much. Such chocolate bars are supposed to be divided into 16 tiny pieces for novice users — advice which hadn’t been on the label. It is these so-called ‘edibles’ that are causing the most serious problems in Colorado. One reason, say doctors, is that users fail to understand the drug takes several hours to take effect when eaten.

So they believe initially that the drug is having no effect, then consume more — and end up accidentally eating too much.

Social experiment: The legalisation of cannabis and its impact on society in Colorado is being closely watched by the rest of the U.S. and the world

Yet because Colorado bans users from smoking marijuana in public, many eat it covertly — and these ‘edibles’ have become the marijuana stores’ best sellers.

When I visited the Native Roots Apothecary, a licensed supplier on Denver’s main shopping street, the assistant explained that an added advantage of its cannabis-laced wine gums, boiled sweets and sugar-coloured gummy bears was that I could easily smuggle them onto a plane to states where the drug is still illegal.

Inevitably, these highly dangerous sweets and biscuits have been falling into children’s hands. Medical centres have reported a surge in admissions for cannabis poisoning. Reports of people dying from a cannabis overdose are very rare, but you can become very ill.

... One child, who had to be hospitalised after eating a pot cookie she found outside her home, was only two years old

So far this year, the Colorado Children’s Hospital in Denver has treated nine children who have eaten edible marijuana, six of whom became critically ill.

The young victims suffered symptoms including hallucinations, severe anxiety, dizziness and vomiting. One child, who had to be hospitalised after eating a pot cookie she found outside her home, was only two years old.

Another two-year-old, Levi Welton, died in a house fire allegedly caused by adults high on marijuana. Disturbingly, both Levi and his brother, Dean, five, tested positive for marijuana.

Schools report an explosion in children bringing marijuana into school. In March, two eight-year-olds and a nine-year-old were caught smoking pot in a school lavatory. Other children have even managed to do it in class, using £15 vapour pens — similar to e-cigarettes — that allow them to inhale the drug without creating any tell-tale smoke or smell.

In another case, a nine-year-old sold his grandmother’s marijuana to three classmates in the school playground. The following day, one of the trio brought in some edible marijuana he had pinched off his own granny.

Ben Cort, who works with alcohol and drug addicts at the University of Colorado Hospital, told me he warns his three young children not to eat sweets they find at friends’ houses. ‘The drug could be in anything, so I’m now having conversations about marijuana with a five-year-old. That’s nuts.’

With marijuana retailers using cartoon characters such as Fred Flintstone in their adverts and heavily marketing their sweets, Mr Cort is convinced they are targeting young people just as the drink and tobacco industries have done in the past. ‘They won’t make their money out of the casual, middle-aged puffer. The best way is to get them hooked when they’re young,’ he said.

The liberal establishment that rushes to believe scientists on climate change are happy to ignore the scientific experts when it comes to marijuana.

Doctors and psychiatrists say that’s certainly happened in Colorado where scant attention has been paid to growing evidence that the drug can damage the developing brain of adolescents, impairing learning, decreasing IQ and, in some cases, lead to schizophrenia.

Liberal policy: Unlike Amsterdam, which has clamped down on tourists visiting just to get stoned, Colorado is welcoming marijuana users with open arms

But Colorado’s ‘green rush’ will not be stopped. Unlike Amsterdam, which has clamped down on tourists visiting just to get stoned, Colorado is welcoming marijuana users with open arms.

Colorado Symphony Orchestra recently teamed up with the marijuana industry for a series of ‘Classically Cannabis’ fundraisers at which music lovers can get stoned while listening to Bach and Puccini.

I was easily able to obtain a two-night marijuana-inclusive deal from one of America’s biggest hotel chains.

On checking into its central Denver hotel and proving I was 21, I was presented with my personal vaporiser (a device which allows you to inhale marijuana fumes without burning it) and a starter pack of weed.

Colorado’s politicians have reaped nearly £11 million in taxes and other fees from marijuana sales since January. In April alone, £13 million in ‘recreational’ pot was sold — and the total is rising every month.

This week, in a terrible irony, Denver councillors discussed whether to spend some of their marijuana tax millions on educating children about the dangers of the drug.

Councillor Charlie Parker, who headed the committee that implemented legalisation in Denver, admitted there had been a ‘lot of unforeseen problems’.

He told me: ‘It’s an industry that hires a lot of people and is bringing a lot of tax revenues, but one has to ask at what cost, especially to young people. And that’s going to take years to determine. My fear is that we could lose a generation of young people if we’re not careful.’