DENVER — The Mile High City is getting higher all the time.
There are now more medical marijuana dispensaries in Denver than there are Starbucks. Glossy guidebooks list nearly 300 locations where Colorado’s 125,000 residents who have been prescribed medical marijuana can get their “medicine.” Many offer a free joint to new customers, allowing them to sample exotic strains like Jah Kush, Golden Goat and Romulan Cotton Candy.
Local smokers even have a professional critic to help them navigate the gauntlet of bongs, pipes and vaporizers, or make that essential choice between Super Silver Haze and Purple Passion.
The critic’s pen name is William Breathes; he keeps his real identity secret to ensure he gets the same treatment as any other patient.
His weekly weed purchase is paid for by the Denver Westword, the popular alternative weekly that hired Breathes after its editors realized they were serving one of the most stoned readerships in America.
“It’s a fun new writing area,” Westword editor Patricia Calhoun told The Daily, “and if your publication prides itself on doing strong cultural coverage of art, theater and food, then why not do pot, too?”
Unlike his fellow smokers, Breathes does not follow his puffs with a Pauly Shore marathon or prolonged mediation over the contents of his pantry.
Instead, he powers up his desktop and crafts a detailed review of both the grass and the medical marijuana dispensary that sold it to him. A recent review, for example, reads:
The Platinum Purps had an orange-rind tartness to it, which would have gone great with the sticky-sweet smell of Tangerine Haze. There was also a solid Triple-D, very floral Flo, and some well done Trainwreck renamed Charlie Sheen, appropriately enough. Other more unique strains out of Scott’s coco mix garden, including Scott’s Blue, the Tange and the Face Wreck Haze, smelled so good I wanted to make a potpourri bowl out of them for my office.
An experienced journalist who used to cover local politics, and so passionate about weed culture that he got a friend at the phone company to give him a number that ends in “420,” Breathes was the ideal fit for this new niche.
With 15 other states and Washington, D.C., now allowing some use of medical marijuana, Breathes is also tackles the ongoing political battles around the drug as medicine.
When, earlier this year, the Colorado Legislature was considering a bill to crack down on driving under the influence by pot smokers, Breathes had a blood analysis done to show that he was three times over the proposed legal limit, even after not smoking all day and being pronounced sober by a doctor.
The bill did not pass.
“Yes, it’s a great gig,” he explained. “But, and this is something only other journalists really get, it’s still a job. Yeah, I smoke weed, but I still have to write, and I have to meet deadlines, and I still have editors ... If I don’t take it seriously, I’ll be fired.”
Justin.Silverman@thedaily.com