What if you could listen in on a group of high school marijuana users talking about medical marijuana? And what if you could find out from every elementary, middle and high school in Colorado whether there are more drugs in school since medical marijuana exploded across the state?
And what if, with the click of a mouse, you could find out how many medical marijuana dispensaries were near the schools you care about?
With the I-News Network, you can do all this.
I-News and two network partners – Education News Colorado and Health …

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Solutions and Rebecca Jones of Education News Colorado
The federal government is cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado for the first time, today ordering 23 dispensaries near schools to shut down within 45 days or face criminal prosecution and seizure of their property.U.S. Attorney John Walsh sent warning letters to the unidentified dispensaries and said in a news release that many are closer than 1,000 feet to K-12 campuses.
“When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not …

By Burt Hubbard
I-News Network
Coloradans who felt their paychecks weren’t going as far this past decade were right.
The state saw a 9% decline in household buying power since 2000, according to an I-News analysis of newly released U.S. Census Bureau survey data.
The hit was widespread – felt in two of every three counties. One of the state’s richest counties – Pitkin County, which is home to Aspen – led the loss with a 17% drop in household buying power since 2000.
At the same time, poverty rates rose in every county, with …

I-News is hosting a free media law workshop, led by the executive legal staff of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The workshop is specially designed for Colorado journalists working in digital media and is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
To attend, please RSVP to I-News director Laura Frank.
When: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011
Where: I-News offices at 1089 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80204
Feel free to come for any or all of the sessions. Bring a sack lunch for the noontime session.
Schedule:
10:00-11:00       …

By Laura Frank and Burt Hubbard
I-News Network
One of every six Coloradans has no health insurance – a figure that has grown more than 20 percent in the past two years alone, a new statewide survey finds.
In addition, more workers lack health insurance and fewer Coloradans reported having a regular place to go when they’re sick or need health care advice.
“We’ve lost ground,” said Ned Calonge, who recently left his post as chief medical officer at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to become president and chief operating officer …

Thousands of Colorado school children are behind in math, reading, writing and science – and they might never catch up.
This week, I-News helped our media partners throughout Colorado tell the story.
I-News analyzed data from the Colorado Student Assessment Program for our media partners.The CSAP data are thousands of numbers that show how students in grades 3 through 10 perform in reading, writing, math and science. I-News boiled the numbers down, then shared them with our media partners statewide.
Here’s some of what we found:
Nearly 87 percent of Colorado public school students …