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would read as much as I could about the legalization movement.
    You know those moments when a gust of wind blows through and steals your old life? Those moments when you’re forced to dig deep and decide: What am I going to do with the rest of my life?
    Call them what you like: moments of growth, of change, of personal development, of enlightenment.
    I was right there. I knew if I jumped, the net would appear. I had seen it in my mind’s eye.
    Marijuana would be my salvation. But only if it was meant to be. Only if it worked for me. Only if it brought joy to me and those around me.
    I would work my ass off doing the due diligence.
    Something would click, but only if it was aligned with my highest and best self.
    I hoped it was.

2
    My Education
    Go ahead and laugh, but there’s only one way to research legal marijuana. And I did it. Again and again and again.
    Thus began my education. My baptism by fire—er, smoke.
    Maybe you’ve had that experience where you get really into something and then you start seeing it everywhere. You buy yourself that Mini Cooper you’ve always wanted, and from that day forward, you see nothing but Mini Coopers on the road. “Wow,” you think, “they’re everywhere!”
    Well, I saw medical marijuana everywhere I looked. I took every opportunity I could to check out medical dispensaries in every quarter of Denver. I kept lists of establishments I was going to check out. I bought books about the history and cultivation of marijuana. I’d pick up High Times —a magazine I hadn’t seen since my teenage years—whenever I saw it on a newsstand. At the time there seemed to be a story about legal marijuana on Denver’s TV news every single night. The topic was often a featured story in the Denver Post. Marijuana was everywhere.
    I was a man on a mission.
    What an amazing time it was.
    Colorado’s medical marijuana laws were rapidly evolving. They’d been first conceived as a way to allow sick patients to growtheir own marijuana plants at home. But citizens who needed it the most—such as cancer patients—were too sick to raise finicky plants. So the law was created to license “caregivers”—family, friends, nurses—who could grow marijuana for their intended patients. You could see where this would inevitably lead: Most caregivers didn’t have the expertise to grow marijuana. So the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment decided to allow the licensing of formal dispensaries—stores that sold product that had been grown by professional growers. If you were sick or in pain, you didn’t have to rely on your nephew’s brown thumb for your supply. You could just bop into a store and buy some weed from a complete stranger.
    The law had transformed a portion of Broadway, in downtown Denver, into a carnival of marijuana dispensaries that locals had dubbed the Green Mile. At least twenty dispensaries dotted this strip of Broadway within a mile of the intersection with Evans Avenue. Neon signs of green crosses and flashing marijuana leaves soon peeked out of many windows.
    By law, you could not enter a marijuana dispensary unless you were an employee or a customer with a red card. Inside, you’d find long counters where budtenders proudly displayed glass jars brimming with sticky buds. They’d also sell all the tools you needed: glass pipes, bongs, vaporizers, lighters, you name it. Other ganjapreneurs were making and selling their own edibles—the legendary marijuana brownies, not to mention chocolate bars, suckers, cookies, fudge, hard candies, and gummy bears laden with marijuana. They would bake, cook, or mold them elsewhere and bring them to the dispensaries to be sold to eager customers who clamored for the novelty of it all.
    These days, you are prevented by law from lighting up or eating your purchase in dispensaries. The industry firmly adheres to the liquor store