I live two blocks off South Broadway and there are 17 dispensaries within a mile and a half of my house. It took me an hour to ride my bike on a six-mile loop and photograph every one of them. more

Yes, that familiar stoner catchphrase is somehow in the past tense in Colorado. We legalized it. It's still hard to believe.

A long 14 months after Amendment 64 passed in November 2012, Denver was the site of the world's first sale of legal recreational marijuana on the morning of January 1, 2014, and soon thereafter was the site of the world's first consumption of legal recreational marijuana.

Colorado's $500 million black market for marijuana has come out of the shadows, and could generate an annual $100 million in taxes -- a number that even an anti-tax zealot could love.

The state is awash in pot brownies, pot soda, pot lotion, pot candy, pot elixirs, and bushels and bushels of plain old pot. (Make that plain old very good pot.) It may be too much of a good thing, but who's going to complain? Not I.

Where do we go from here?

We're already higher than most cities, so we don't need to go in that direction, and we're also pretty well grounded and down-to-earth in Denver, so no need to retreat.

We could shimmy side to side, make some strong lateral moves. That seems like the way to go. Embrace the change and look for room for improvement -- but let's smoke that joint first. -- EP