Grasslands: A Journalism Minded Agency With Ricardo Baca

Ricardo Baca is a 20-year veteran journalist and cannabis futurist, widely respected in both modern media and drug-policy circles. He was appointed The Denver Post’s first-ever cannabis editor in 2013 and founded the news vertical The Cannabist, where he extensively covered the advent of the U.S. adult-use cannabis market and related issues around the world, as seen in the feature documentary Rolling Papers. We talk to Ricardo about the intersection of cannabis and psychedelics based on his observations attending the 2023 Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver. We also talk about the positive media coverage from the likes of Rolling Stone and Vice about the event and how that compares to the critical coverage cannabis gets. We also discuss the paths of legalization with psychedelics getting leverage by needing only FDA approval for each treatment while cannabis needs policymakers. We also discuss Ricardo’s appointment as a board member to the Natural Medicine Advisory Board in Colorado under the leadership of Colorado Governor Jared Polis.