Colorado newspaper hiring marijuana critic

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DENVER (AP) — The store has a television lounge and a pool table, and snacks and acupuncture are free for customers who drop up to $130 an ounce on 16 varieties of marijuana. But a reviewer of the business warns the decor looks a little cliche, what with the Grateful Dead posters on the wall and the Mexican-blanket tablecloths.

The medical marijuana review business is booming as states like Colorado and California have seen an explosion in the number of pot shops.

A Denver alternative newspaper recently posted an ad for what some consider the sweetest job in journalism — a reviewer of the state's marijuana dispensaries and their products.

Medical marijuana users can also look to dozens of review Web sites, even mainstream rating sites such as Yelp or Citysearch, to find their high. At least five iPhone applications allow weed fans to find the closest place to legally buy bud in the 14 states that allow some sort of medical marijuana.

The Denver paper, Westword, has already has gotten more than 120 applicants, many of them offering to do the reviews for free. When the newspaper settles on a permanent critic for its new "Mile Highs and Lows" column, industry watchers say, it will be the first professional newspaper critic of medical marijuana in the country.

There's one condition: The critic has to have a medical ailment that allows them to legally enter a dispensary, and buy and use marijuana.

"More and more people are having the opportunity to use marijuana for whatever illness they have. Se we want to be a place they can come to find out which place is the best, the cleanest, the closest, that kind of stuff," said Joe Tone, Web editor at Westword.

Most current reviews focus on dispensaries in California, the first state in the nation to approve medical marijuana in 1996. Los Angeles now has an estimated 800 medical pot shops, up from only four in 2005. Colorado has more than 100, including one across the street from the state Capitol.

The growth of the business has created clashes with local, state and federal authorities, prompting the U.S. Attorney General to issue guidelines this week telling federal prosecutors that targeting people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws was not a good use of their time.

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