Author: Bailey Reutzel

There’s this Utopia in my mind with a mountain range backdrop where idealists come together to talk about humanity’s existence while experimenting with drugs, doing art and snowboarding. Utopias have long been sought by philosophers and political science majors, the anarchists, the religious and hippies. “Nowhere has given rise to more local utopias than the U.S.,” says Nathan Schneider, an author and journalist who covers religion and political movements in the States and recently moved to Boulder, Colorado. Speaking of Colorado, it’s become the state many young people think of as paradise, and much of that stems from the state’s move to legalize marijuana, both medically and recreationally. Cannabis has a cult following. There aren’t many people like myself, sympathetic to the cause but yet, uninterested in smoking it (most the time). Most people either smoke the herb every damn day or abstain. Hordes of hippies and entrepreneurs have moved to the state in recent years to join the weed industry, from growing to distributing to dispensing. It’s industry is more mature than Oregon’s or Washington’s or Alaska’s, so if there’s a story about pot, it mentions Colorado, and if there’s a story about Colorado, it mentions pot. “Sounds like the easy way out,” a friend in Denver says when I pull him for references in the industry. “Reading another article about Colorado and marijuana is…. dead. It’s been...