Cannabis tours busted by the Denver Police in June are being taken to trial, The Denver Post reports.
Colorado Cannabis Tours and My 420 Tours were both targeted by police in a sting earlier this year. Police pulled over the buses under the guise of normal traffic violations and proceeded to ticket the drivers and everyone on the bus, some with criminal charges.
My 420 Tours’ CEO Danny Schaefer believes it was a deliberate and intimidating show of enforcement by the Denver PD and the City of Denver.
“We’ve been working diligently to come to kind of an amicable resolution with the city. Unfortunately, they’re taking a hard-line stance on just our segment of the space, straight across the board.” — Danny Schaefer, CEO of My 420 Tours, via The Denver Post
After the tour bus companies paid $100,000 in legal bills on behalf of the passengers, most of whom settled for minor civil fines, four tour bus employees have, instead of settling, opted to go to trial.
Meanwhile, the tour bus companies have continued to operate — both companies who were targeted in the sting as well as others in the city that slipped under the radar. No company, including Colorado Cannabis Tours and My 420 Tours, has been informed of any litigation, charged with a crime or civil offense, or been served with a cease and desist.
A Denver city task force was called to study a November 2016 rule that was supposed to allow and encourage social cannabis consumption spaces, which many entrepreneurs and cannabis professionals called overly restrictive. The task force declared the rules were confusing and limiting and recommended the city legalize and license the cannabis tours. However, only a single business has been able to open a social cannabis space under the rules, which are nearly 2 years old.
Denver legislators will hopefully be pressured to solve this problem by the four tour bus employees’ pending court cases.