Developing stories

Most news is served to you finished: reported, written, edited, done. The stories on this page are different, and the difference is deliberate: the things they cover haven't finished happening, so the stories about them can't honestly be finished either.

So we show our work. Every claim carries its evidence on its face: what a law's own text says, what a named person said on the record, what we could not confirm no matter where we looked. The unverified is labeled unverified, in plain sight. Every update is timestamped by the page's own history: you can always see what we knew, and when we knew it.

Each story moves through four states as it matures: researching (we're gathering; nothing is settled), developing (published and actively updated as verified facts land), tracking (matured; we re-check on a regular cadence), and settled (concluded; the page stays as a record). Every story page says which state it's in, at the top.

And you're invited into the making. Every story below can be sent to you as a research snapshot (a file you can read or hand to your own AI assistant), and every page carries a prompt your AI can use to read our latest record directly. Questions, corrections, and sources genuinely steer what we chase next: email editor@colorado-medical-cannabis.org.

The stories

Colorado marijuana enforcement: request for producer input

Status: developing; input invited. Leading enforcement comparisons, notes on all 41 posted 2026 settlement orders, the audit, and industry warnings about deterrence and competitive harm. We are asking producers and other industry participants to correct and add to this record before any submission to authorities.

Your medicine changed federal drug schedules in April. Almost nobody told you.

Status: researching. On April 28, 2026, marijuana under state medical licenses moved from federal Schedule I to Schedule III. What that actually changes at a Colorado dispensary counter, the open question nobody has answered in writing (what schedule the product in a patient's hand is), and the bigger rescheduling decision whose written arguments close August 17.

Ryan's Law in Colorado: who will actually allow it?

Status: researching. A Colorado law enacted in 2026 lets hospitals, hospices, nursing homes and other licensed health facilities allow medical cannabis for terminally ill patients, and requires none of them to. We're researching what a dying patient can actually count on, which facilities respond, what the law's undefined "disseminate" duty requires, and what federal rescheduling changed.

Cannabis-friendly lodging and tourism in Colorado

Status: researching; page coming. The state built elaborate licensing for cannabis businesses and public venues, and left private hospitality almost entirely alone. What that means for visitors who want to try cannabis legally, and for the hosts who welcome them.

Colorado's marijuana testing overhaul: one maze, three layers

Status: researching. The state's testing rules were rewritten effective January 2026, a further overhaul is moving through rulemaking, and a statutory rewrite died in committee. Producers and dispensaries have to navigate all three layers at once; we're mapping the maze from the primary documents, matrix by matrix, because flower, concentrates, infused products and pre-rolls each live under different tables. Published under it so far: what changed on January 5, and what it means at the counter, and the August 7 Science & Policy Forum, our own reporting from the state's meeting recording, where third-party sampling came off the table and the gap between lab results and the state lab's results got the answer "I don't think we have an answer to that."

The Science & Policy Forum archive

Status: developing. The standing state working group where testing science gets argued: one summary per meeting, machine-transcribed from the Division's published recordings and drafted by our AI desk, covering the year around the January 2026 testing rules: the meetings that shaped them and the meetings now living with them. Each summary carries an AI Generated Summary banner until our editor has reviewed it, and a closing analysis will trace what kept coming back unresolved across the year.