CANNABIS UNIVERSITY™ of Colorado

Not Quite a Mile High

You can find just about everything you want at Mile High Marketplace, that collection of kitsch north of downtown Denver at I-76 and 88th Avenue that’s long been a local institution (and in our hearts will always be known by its old name, Mile High Flea Market). Just about everything, that is, except anything pertaining to medical marijuana.

Michelle LaMay, dean of Cannabis University, a local medical marijuana education program, learned that the hard way this past Sunday. She and a colleague had barely set up the table in the space they’d reserved to advertise their wares and services when Marketplace managers and security guards stopped by and said that since this was “a family place” and someone had made a complaint, Cannabis University would have to leave.

LaMay isn’t sure what caused the concern. The booth featured a large “Cannabis University” banner, program materials, “Cannabis University Honor Student” T-shirts and some “hippie bracelets,” she says. Maybe the problem was the spiky, bright-green marijuana sunglasses worn by LaMay, who describes herself as “an old, disabled lady.” Whatever the offensive material might have been (the Marketplace has not returned our calls), it’s hard to imagine that it might have been worse than many of the other items for sale at the flea market -- including a bedazzled pot-leaf T-shirt we once saw there.

LaMay’s $33 table-registration fee was returned, but she’s not going away quietly. She’s planning to launch the same sort of protest campaign that targeted the Town Center of Aurora this past summer after a man was banned from the mall for wearing a “Yes We Cannabis” T-shirt. Then again, if the Marketplace has a change of heart about pot paraphernalia, LaMay is willing to lend a hand. “I will hold a training seminar if they want to hire me,” says the self-professed "Dean of Green.”

In the meantime, though, it looks like Mile High Marketplace isn’t high enough for MMJ.