Inside A Colorado Grow Facility
BALDWIN: Very soon it will be legal in Colorado to not only buy pot for medicinal uses, but personal use as well. CNN's Jim Spellman talks to the owner of a state of the art grow facility who says business isn't quite booming, at least not just yet.</s>JIM SPELLMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like many small businessmen, Shaun Gindi has employees, a warehouse, retail stores and his fair share of headaches.</s>SHAUN GINDI, COMPASSIONATE PAIN MANAGEMENT: I make this business work paycheck to paycheck.</s>SPELLMAN: But his product is anything but usual. Gindi grows and sells marijuana.</s>GINDI: This is a flower room looks like.</s>SPELLMAN: He grows the cannabis in this warehouse in Denver and has two medical dispensaries in the suburbs.</s>GINDI: I have about 20 people working for me. They do anything from growers to trimming to working as caregivers in the stores.</s>SPELLMAN: So far, his business has been limited to medical marijuana, selling only to Colorado residents with a doctor's recommendation and state-issued red card. But last year, voters passed amendment 64 legalizing recreational use of marijuana. The state is still working out regulations ahead of January 2014 when recreational marijuana stores are expected to open. Dispensaries like Gindi's are expected to be able to convert and sell to anyone over 21, but there are several catches. (on camera): This is still against federal law. That must create an unbelievable amount of stress for you.</s>GINDI: Yes, it does. I'm talking to you right now. There is a voice in the back of my head that, there is an innate nervousness to being in this business.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): A bill in Congress would bar the federal government from going after people in states that have legalized marijuana, but it is unclear if the bill has a chance of becoming law. (on camera): Are you afraid that all that you've built here will be taken away from you?</s>GINDI: Yes. I can't even keep my face straight saying that. That's such a real fear.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): Nate Laptegaard runs the warehouse. (on camera): I want to learn more about exactly how you grow marijuana on essentially an indoor farm. Where does it start?</s>NATE LAPTEGAARD, COMPASSIONATE PAIN MANAGEMENT: It starts in the lab.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): With cuttings known as clones.</s>LAPTEGAARD: Get a little gel on there.</s>SPELLMAN: That go into these tanks for about two weeks then to this room for about five weeks under simulated sunlight in a CO2 rich environment. (on camera): Each of these plants gets in its own bar code?</s>LAPTEGAARD: That's right. Every single plant when it comes out of the corner, once it gets into here it's coded individually. We're able to trace that plant from this stage all the way to the end product.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): Then the light is cut back, to simulate the shorter days of autumn triggering the plants to flower and finally it's off to be trimmed and dried. The entire process is regulated by the state. After a criminal background check employees are issued a Colorado marijuana worker I.D. card. Every time a plant is moved, the employee logs it using this software. A fingerprint scanner tracks the employees at every turn.</s>LAPTEGAARD: There's no scar face here. There's no AK-47s, none of that stuff. We have inspectors from the state in here all the time.</s>SPELLMAN: Even though Gindi pays sales and income tax, marijuana is still against federal law so expenses cannot be deducted from federal taxes and FDIC-backed banks won't take their money.</s>GINDI: There's nothing glamorous about this business. It's a struggle trying to operate without a bank account, trying to run a business without being able to take deductions.</s>SPELLMAN: At his dispensary, Gindi operates in a highly competitive marketplace. About 500 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado compete for the business of the 108,000 people on the medical marijuana registry. (on camera): Have they become more kind of sores about their marijuana?</s>LEAH, BUDTENDER: Definitely, definitely. You don't ever see a, quote/unquote, "swag" any more. It's all chronic. It's all hydroponic.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): Competition has driven prices down to half of what they were just three years ago, creating razor thin margins. But could that change when more people, even pot tourists from out of state are able to legally buy weed? Gindi isn't so sure.</s>GINDI: There's a risk that comes along with it.</s>SPELLMAN (on camera): That might push the federal government into acting where they were comfortable not acting with medical marijuana.</s>GINDI: Right. And I have to make that choice.</s>SPELLMAN (voice-over): These marijuana pioneers will probably never convince all of their critics that pot should be legal, but they see themselves as the good guys.</s>LAPTEGAARD: Every single person that comes here that works for me, when they clock in, they put their finger on a sensor. And they know they're committing a federal crime. So every single person that works in this industry are all here for one reason and one reason only, we believe marijuana prohibition is immoral and we have to do something about that.</s>SPELLMAN: Jim Spellman, CNN, Denver.