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With the forthcoming legalization of marijuana in Colorado, entrepreneurs and researchers finally have the opportunity to do more with cannabis than has been achieved before.

While typically people think of marijuana groweries and marijuana dispensaries as the prototypical images of marijuana legalization and availability — the ability to purchase and smoke flowers — there are still two major elements of the marijuana production cycle that form a crucial element of the forthcoming marijuana economy.

Not only are companies developing ways to consume cannabis besides smoke inhalation, but also laboratories are forming an essential element of the production cycle by ascertaining the exact quality of what's going for sale.

Take, for instance, Dixie Elixirs and CannLabs, two unique firms building the scientific niche in Colorado's market.

Dixie Elixirs is setting itself to be the Pepsi of marijuana. They're a marijuana-infused products company, with a wide-ranging array of cannabis products ranging from soft drinks to chocolate to mints to ointments. Meanwhile, CannLabs is poised to dominate the cannabis quality testing market in the post-legalization Colorado.

Let's take a look at what makes them so special.

Their products are ubiquitous throughout the Denver marijuana markets, and with good reason. These firms are going to be huge.

The center of Dixie Elixirs is not unlike the center of any other food processing facility: It's a kitchen.

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Walter Hickey / BI

But in a back room is the real prize. The active ingredients in marijuana are the cannabinoid oils, and this machine — designed by a former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine technician and sold by his company Apeks Supercritical — isolates those oils with a CO2 extraction process.

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Walter Hickey / BI

The cannabinoid acids are then infused into anything from their iconic soft drinks to truffles.

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Walter Hickey / BI





The marijuana they use to get these oils would otherwise be waste from a marijuana growery — the cannabis by-products that, while still containing the oils that convey a "high," are not smokable or able to be sold to customers as flowers.

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