Colorado’s marijuana industry would be limited to half-gram joints and its newly approved psychedelic space banned from makinginfused products like mushroom chocolates or gummiesif state lawmakers approve a bill proposing tighter marijuana and natural medicine regulations.
Senate Bill 25-076, introduced January 22, would prohibit dispensary customers under the age of 26 from buying certain products. It would also add more labeling and potency requirements to products at dispensaries and mandate that “inhaled marijuana” be limited by weight.
If SB 076 is approved, psilocybin extracts and edibles would be prohibited from Colorado’s regulated psychedelic spaces; the state just started accepting healing center and related applications less than a month ago. And Colorado’s social equity marijuana program, intended to encourage cannabis entrepreneurs from culturally and economically diverse backgrounds, would no longer be limited to only marijuana licensees — despite being completely funded by marijuana tax revenue.
The legislation is pushed by a group that lobbies against legal cannabis and psychedelics in the name of youth protection, and mirrors many of its requests from previous rulemaking periods.
“This comes from the lessons learned since cannabis got legalized in 2012. The science has evolved, and as opposed to how the state tackled cannabis, we’re actually trying to help the state get out on the front edge of psychedelics,” says Alton Dillard, spokesman for One Chance to Grow Up Colorado.
One Chance to Grow Up had a large role in the drafting of SB 076, which is sponsored in the Colorado Legislature by Senator Judy Amabile and Representative Kyle Brown, both Democrats, as well as Republican Senator Byron Pelton. Although the bill is already receiving pushback from the commercial marijuana sector and natural medicine advocates alike, One Chance has succeeded in passing wide-spanning guardrails on marijuana and extracted THC products in the past.
Inhalable marijuana could be under strict weight limits if Senate Bill 25-076 passes.
Jacqueline Collins
The marijuana lobby knew an aggressive bill was coming this year, according to Chuck Smith, president of Colorado Leads, a cannabis trade group. Smith and other industry representatives plan to attend a stakeholder session with lawmakers next week to learn more about the measure. Although the Colorado Leads legal team is still reviewing the bill language, Smith says he’s ready for the political battle.
“The proposed legislation would be detrimental to our state’s cannabis industry and flies in the face of Coloradans who have made it abundantly clear cannabis should be legal for adults and regulated like alcohol,” Smith says. “We anticipated this push by opponents of Colorado’s legal cannabis system, and we are prepared to defend our industry with a strong, unified voice. We will vigorously oppose this measure and any others that threaten Colorado’s regulated cannabis market and the critical economic and public safety roles it plays in our state and local communities.”
Colorado’s marijuana industry, stuck in a three-year recession, doesn’t carry the weight at the Colorado Capitol that it used to, but business owners say they feel backed into a corner as they struggle to stay alive. Meanwhile, licensed psilocybin businesses haven’t yet opened in Colorado; the rules were finalized by the state last fall.
“It’s no surprise that a group of prohibitionists want to resist or undermine something new in Colorado,” says Joshua Kappel, a Denver-based attorney who helped draft Colorado’s psychedelics legalization and decriminalization initiative approved by voters in November 2022. “Big picture: it’s a solution in search of a problem. The proposed bill is either redundant, duplicative or overrides very thoughtful rulemaking by the regulatory agencies and the hundreds of hours spent in rulemaking.”
Here is how SB 076 would change retail marijuana and psychedelics in Colorado:
The bill proposes a set of color strips for marijuana product labels to correspond with THC potency percentages. If a product has 5 percent or less THC, the color would be blue. For products up to 15 percent THC, that strip would be yellow, while products with up to 50 percent THC would be orange, and anything with more than 50 percent would be red. Dispensaries would have to post signage explaining the colors.
Recreational marijuana can be purchased by anyone 21 or older in Colorado, but SB 076 proposes banning customers under 26 from purchasing any product with more than 10 percent THC or inhaled products containing added flavor ingredients, such as flavored vapes.
Under the bill’s language, inhaled marijuana packaging would have to list the amount of THC per serving and the number of intended servings, as well as the total THC within the package and directions for consumption of a single serving.
Perhaps the biggest commercial impact of the bill, however, is a proposed limit to inhaled marijuana products. According to the bill summary, SB 076 would limit the standard serving size of inhalable marijuana, such as flower, hash and pre-rolled joints, to ten milligrams while also limiting a total package to 500 milligrams, or a half-gram in weight.
“This is about trying to harmonize, almost how like alcohol is regulated, with the goal of making people understand the amount of THC per serving,” Dillard says. “When it comes to vapes and concentrates, those potencies can sometimes go higher than 90 percent, By creating that color coding, it gives people a better understanding.”
According to Dillard, the proposed age limit is based on scientific research that shows the prefrontal cortex of human brains usually doesn’t fully develop until someone is 25. But marijuana business owners still feel singled out, and say they’re tired of bad-faith alcohol comparisons.
“They’re trying to cap pre-rolls at 500 milligrams. I don’t make anything at 500 milligrams. That would literally kill my business, an independent Black business in Colorado. … It’s a very arbitrary number. To say this arbitrary number or this size of a pre-roll is safer doesn’t make sense at all,” says Jarell Wall, owner of Gentleman Quinn’s Blunt Co., a pre-roll blunt company. “The color orange isn’t going to show someone any more severity. The THC number already does show people. It is what it is.”‘
Wall also takes issue with limiting dispensary products for customers under 26, pointing to legal ages for voting and tobacco use (eighteen) and alcohol consumption (21).
“It’s like saying if you want White Claws or hard liquor, you have to be older than 25,” adds Kappel, who has also represented marijuana clients at his law firm, Vicente LLP. “It’s just an attack on individual freedom.”
Asked to elaborate on the alcohol comparison, Dillard says “that would be for someone running an alcohol bill,” adding that One Chance focuses on marijuana.
“When it comes to vapes and concentrates, those potencies can sometimes go higher than 90 percent,” he says. “But for us, again, when it comes to psychedelics, we’re trying to get in front of the wave.”
Denver decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms in 2019. In 2022, Coloradans voted to decriminalize certain natural psychedelics while also legalizing therapeutic psilocybin.
Evan Semón
On top of limiting marijuana sales, SB 076 also seeks to limit psychedelic products at newly licensed psilocybin healing centers. If passed, the measure would ban psychedelic gummies, chocolates or other candies and confections from licensed facilities; any regulated psychedelic product that is made with added flavors or administered by non-oral means would be prohibited, too. A licensed psychedelic product would also have to bear a universal symbol indicating that it contains psilocybin.
If DMT, ibogaine and mescaline — all of which are now decriminalized in Colorado and up for medical legalization review within the next few years — are ever approved by the state, these rules would apply to those forms of natural medicine, too. Still, these rules would only apply to the licensed psilocybin space, and not personal use products that are experiencing their own underground boom right now.
According to Dillard, these restrictions are intended to keep children from being attracted to products infused with psychedelics. Citing risks to children from marijuana edibles in the forms of candy and a recent story about two children being hospitalized in Colorado Springs after eating psilocybin, Dillard calls it an “obvious goal.”
“By making sure these things are not in a form that’s easily appealing to youth, that is one of the things that will set the state ahead of the wave here,” he notes.
One Chance suggested these same restrictions during rulemaking sessions overseen by the Natural Medicine Division, an arm of the state Department of Revenue tasked with regulating Colorado’s burgeoning psychedelic space. The NMD rejected those suggestions, however — and, according to Kappel, for good reason.
“The restrictions are only going to make the cost of natural medicine more expensive and more inaccessible,” argues Kappel, adding that a measure like SB 076 will “move people into the unregulated space.”
Being forced to eat raw mushrooms is also unappetizing, he says, while psilocybin lab operators have argued in favor of infused products because they’re typically easier for digestive systems to process, avoiding some of the nausea associated with psilocybin mushrooms.
“Natural medicine tastes bad to almost anyone who uses it,” Kappel adds. “This just isn’t helpful to address.”
The bill directs the NMD, Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division and other state officials “to prioritize the public health over private interests in exercising regulatory authority,” and for state lawmakers to “prevent these agencies…from becoming unduly influenced by licensees or registrants,” but does not provide specifics as to how this would be accomplished.
It would be “similar to how oil, gas industries and air quality” are regulated, according to One Chance. The NMD and MED declined to comment on that portion of the bill.
On top of product restrictions, the bill also demands that the state create “requirements and standards” for collecting and reporting data about adverse medical or behavioral reactions to natural medicine in Colorado, similar to how medical professionals in Colorado must track adverse health impacts of THC.
But both the NMD and state Department of Regulatory Agencies have already called for statewide studies to track adverse and harmful effects of natural psychedelics, according to Kappel. That’s partly thanks to a 2023 bill sponsored by Senator Amabile that requires the NMD to request “relevant data concerning law enforcement incidents, adverse health events, impacts to health care systems, consumer protections claims and behavioral impacts related to natural medicine.”
“The people who wrote this bill didn’t do their homework, because this is already the case. In DORA and the [Department of Revenue], there are definitions of adverse events and reporting of those events. If the event is life-threatening, it must be reported within 24 hours,” Kappel says. “I hope that Colorado focuses on real problems facing society today, and creating restrictions on natural medicine products used for healing — in a supervised setting where they can’t take the products home, no less — is silly.”
The measure also suggests thinning out Colorado’s social equity program for marijuana business licensees.Created by the legislature in 2021 to help new cannabis entrepreneurs secure funding, technical assistance and mentorship, the Cannabis Business Office is funded by the state Marijuana Tax Cash Fund, which is comprised entirely of marijuana tax revenue and fees.
The Cannabis Business Office issues grants and low-interest loans to marijuana business owners who qualify under one of the following: They or their families were negatively impacted by the War on Drugs, they earn less than 50 percent of the state median income, or they come from a community designated as a low-economic opportunity zone by the Office of Economic Development and International Trade. These zones also include communities that have been historically marginalized and negatively impacted by the War on Drugs.
Colorado’s marijuana social equity program has been criticized as being too little, too late for small business owners, and there have been instances of larger companies taking advantage of qualifications. Still, the Cannabis Business Office has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to small and unique marijuana businesses in Colorado, including Tetra Lounge, Denver’s only pot hospitality lounge that allows smoking, and Bachaz, a Mexican-inspired edibles company.
If SB 076 passes, the loans, grants and technical assistance from the Cannabis Business Office would no longer be devoted to marijuana businesses. Instead, that help would be open to “a person who wants to start any type of
business.”
Dillard referred questions about the social equity program changes to Amabile, who has not responded to a request for comment.
Amabile has pursued limits for marijuana and psychedelics in previous years. She has publicly spoken about her desire for stricter marijuana policy and more youth protection in Colorado, and talked about the impact it could have had on her son, who has struggled with schizoaffective disorder.
Marijuana hospitality bus owner and social equity advocate Sarah Woodson, who pushed for the 2021 law creating the Cannabis Business Office, says Amabile’s actions prove “a deep misunderstanding of the systemic inequities faced by marginalized communities and reveal a lack of commitment to addressing the disparities in the cannabis industry.”
“Let’s not forget: programs exist across local and state governments to support minority- and women-owned businesses. While white women statistically benefit the most from these initiatives, cannabis businesses are excluded. This isn’t about equity; it’s about erasure,” Woodson says in a statement. “The cannabis industry is struggling not because of the communities Senator Amabile so casually dismisses, but because of protectionism and greed. We could have a thriving ecosystem of dispensaries, delivery services, lounges and cultivation facilities. Instead, policies and attitudes like hers have stifled progress.”
The proposal will be heard by the Senate Business Labor and Technology Committee, but no date has yet been set. See the full text of the most recent version of the bill below:
The proposal would prohibit dispensary shoppers under 26 from buying certain products, limit “inhalable marijuana” to a half-gram and ban psilocybin edibles. Read More
