Not this year. After 42 concerts at Dick’s, Phish has moved its Colorado visit to this Thursday through Saturday, July 3-5, and, for the first time, switched to Folsom Field at the University of Colorado Boulder. The concerts are now taking place at a much larger venue in a much denser residential and commercial area, something that will present new challenges and opportunities that will only be clear when it’s over, the show’s promoter said.

“There’s always risk involved because we don’t know how it’s going to go,” said Don Strasburg, president of AEG Presents’ Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest regions. “But especially with Phish, they’re a band that takes intentional risks. … It’s akin to going to a sporting event with an amazing quarterback, who might throw the most amazing touchdown of all time.”

Strasburg said the band, its team, and AEG will wait until the first Folsom run has ended to make decisions about a repeat. He declined to comment on a specific reason for the change, saying only that Phish still loves Dick’s, but that the band thought a Folsom run was “worth trying.”

Strasburg has spent decades boosting Phish, which he first booked at the Boulder Theater on April 19, 1990, and has followed closely as a fan and promoter since. Now a worldwide phenomenon that has sold more than 13 million concert tickets, according to Pollstar, and cemented its place among live music’s greatest acts, Phish brings scores of fans and their money with it wherever it tours — for better or worse.

Its annual shows at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park have made that venue its second most-played of all time, trailing only Madison Square Garden, according to phish.net. But Phish hasn’t played Boulder since 1993, despite performing some of its earliest shows in Colorado in 1988 and 1990.

It’s also worth remembering that Phish was unofficially banned from Red Rocks Amphitheatre after a 1996 concert that ended poorly for its host town.

“By the time police donned riot gear and started arresting the band’s fervent fans for overpartying in nearby Morrison, the damage was done,” The Denver Post wrote at the time. “In the midst of what one business owner called ‘an invasion,’ 10 people went to jail, the town was turned upside down and the band was unofficially banned from Red Rocks for a decade.”

Phish returned to Red Rocks in 2009 for a much smoother ride, but has not played the venue since then. The question now is whether Phish can actually pack three nights at Folsom, a much bigger venue with a potential capacity of roughly 50,0000 people per show — compared with Dick’s 24,000 per show.

If Phish doesn’t sell more than 125,000 total tickets in Boulder (compared to 96,000 across four shows at Dick’s), the upgrade may not be worth it, even if fans play nice and infuse Boulder with food, drink and hotel spending while respecting property and public spaces.

“Any time they play a new venue like Folsom, it’s a special occasion for a lot of the phans,” wrote New York City resident Drew Wellin in an email to The Denver Post. He attended Colorado College from 1998 to 2002 and has been watching Phish play live since his first Madison Square Garden show in 1995. That includes “legendary” Colorado sets at McNichols Arena and at Dick’s.

“Nobody knows what to expect — how is the band going to fill this new space? What tricks do they have up their sleeves for us?” he added. “And what is going to happen with the lights?”

Despite the optimism, the University of Colorado’s Athletics Department has in the past been hostile to concerts at Folsom, as have Boulder residents who said they could hear the shows more than three miles away. An “outraged” CU Board of Regents effectively banned rock shows there starting in 1986, after a booming Van Halen concert drew numerous residential complaints.

After only a handful of concerts since then — including a 2001 Dave Matthews Band run that incurred $15,000 in fines for breaking curfew (a common fine for Folsom acts) — Dead and Company helped restart regular shows there in 2016, drawing a relatively older, calmer fan base.

Folsom is well-positioned to monitor and move fans into and out of the venue with ease, given its tested history as CU’s football arena, and as a sporadic venue for big acts. Dead & Company’s July 1-3, 2023, shows nabbed positive reviews from fans after years of consecutive visits. The DJ and producer John Summit is also slated to play there on Oct. 18, although no other shows are currently on the 2025 calendar.

AEG Presents and university officials said they hope to see more concerts at Folsom in 2026.

“Shows of this caliber are monumental for our campus, our community, and our state in that they attract fans from literally all over the world to Boulder,” said Ryan Gottlieb, senior associate athletic director at the University of Colorado. “We’re looking forward to three incredible nights of music under the stars and the majestic Flatirons.”

Folsom has been hosting concerts for more than five decades, including from The Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen, Dave Matthews Band, and Odesza. A Phish run will further cement its place as one of Colorado’s top live-music venues, AEG’s Strasburg said. And he predicts many more years of shows there — country artist Tyler Childers performed the first-ever country concert there last year, and there will be more “firsts” around the corner.

Strasburg declined to say how much it cost AEG to rent Folsom over Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, but in 2016 the promoter spent at least $250,000 to rent Folsom for a pair of Dead and Company shows, according to a CU campus spokesman at the time. The CU Athletic Department made $695,373.52 after expenses for the shows on July 2 and 3 that year, including from the stadium rental.

“It’s a very expensive undertaking to put on concerts at this level, whether it’s Red Rocks or Dick’s or Folsom,” Strasburg said. ” … I don’t take anything for granted, but hopefully there will be more next year.”

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Colorado policymakers, including Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser, expressed enthusiasm about the potential of these novel mental health treatments at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week.

The five-day event welcomed about 8,000 attendees alongside celebrities, researchers, and representatives of medical groups like the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

Though drugs like “magic mushrooms” are not yet widely accepted or accessible as medicines, they are available in Colorado. Voters legalized psychedelic-assisted therapy in 2022 and the first facilities licensed to offer it – known as healing centers – began seeing patients this month.

Weiser, one of the first speakers at the conference, said he was excited about so-called natural medicines, which have shown promise in helping individuals suffering from severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.

“Colorado voters once again were at the forefront of an important experiment in public health,” Weiser said. “This is something we now have the ability to research, have the ability to support people in ways that before and in generations past were told just to suck it up.”

Polis, too, stated he was proud of the work regulators had done to build a legal framework for businesses and therapists. Doing so was “easier than we thought,” Polis said, but that didn’t overshadow the need to do so thoughtfully and set an example for other states.

“We want to do it in a way where the story out of Colorado and Oregon is one that fundamentally encourages other states to move forward,” he said.

Both Polis and Weiser touted the ability to further research psychedelics as an added benefit of legalization. Because substances like psilocybin are federally scheduled drugs, they are notoriously difficult to procure and study. While the potential benefits have been widely covered, they have so far been extrapolated from small studies and clinical trials, and researchers are only beginning to explore the risks and harms associated with hallucinogens.

“We’re creating pathways for qualified researchers to do research and analysis to elevate our ability to understand the reasons (people) are seeking these services. Of course, we want to understand negative or adverse events, we also want to understand the benefits,” Polis said.

Research and science-backed data will be the key to weaving psychedelic modalities into modern medicine and health care, said Dr. Marketa Wills, CEO and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association. Wills was appointed to her position in 2024 as the organization sought to prepare professionals for the emergence of psilocybin in therapeutic contexts.

She acknowledged that dozens of clinical trials using psychedelics to treat a variety of conditions are currently in the pipeline for consideration by the Food and Drug Administration. If approved, those drugs would be rescheduled and considered medicines available for doctors to prescribe to patients.

It’s not a question of if that will happen, but when, according to Wills. “It’s coming and we all need to get ready,” she said.

Still, there is a hesitance to accept psychedelics in the psychiatric community. Several of APA’s affiliate state branches have opposed some legislation to legalize these substances because of the lack of research into their efficacy and safety profiles. Most physicians, psychologists and psychiatrists have not had training or education on these drugs, so there’s something of “fear” about rushing to use them, she said.

“The APA’s stance is that we understand that there is growing, mounting evidence on all the different compounds,” Wills said. “We support research, we support investigation, but at this time there’s not enough evidence to come down as a position and state ‘we’re ready for this.’”

“We are following that literature very, very closely. We are looking forward to a time where that tipping point will happen, and again, we want to be prepared for that,” she added.

That sentiment, however, is not deterring the public from seeking out psychedelics in Colorado and elsewhere, according to Dr. Andrew Monte, associate director of Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety. Monte and his team at Denver Health recently conducted a survey to identify trends in what they call psychedelic tourism.

Of the 2,124 U.S.-based psychedelics users who were surveyed, about a third (32.3%) traveled to destinations specifically to use them. Colorado was the top destination with 42.9% of travelers choosing a trip here, followed by international locations (38.5%) and Oregon (28.9%).

Of those people who traveled to use psychedelics, most did so for recreational enjoyment. However, Monte is quick to note that a sizeable portion reported having medical conditions such as anxiety and depression.

“Early on, people were coming to Colorado to use medical cannabis, and so we’re seeing a very similar phenomenon here,” Monte said.

“We know that people that travel are more likely to use for medical purposes and that does suggest some people are traveling to treat medical conditions… the fact of the matter is mental health conditions are difficult to treat and there aren’t great treatments, and people are looking for new solutions.”

Monte expects psychedelic tourism will increase as Colorado’s industry gets off the ground, and businesses here appear prepared to meet demand.

In the exhibit hall at Psychedelic Science, Vail company The Psylutions promoted its status as one of the state’s first licensed mushroom cultivators and product manufacturers. Founder Rhonda DeSantis said it recently began extracting psilocybin and making edibles for healing centers.

That was good news for Austin Mao, who is preparing to open a healing center called Ceremonia in Golden. He approached DeSantis about becoming a psilocybin provider for his facility, which he hopes to open in August, offering a candid look at how this new industry is emerging from the underground to become a legitimate industry.

“It’s different than going on Signal and messaging my supplier,” Mao said with a laugh.

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Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California, San Diego, tells his students a cautionary tale about a 76-year-old patient who, like many older people, struggled with insomnia.

“She had problems falling asleep, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night,” he said. “So her daughter brought her some sleep gummies” — edible cannabis candies.

“She tried a gummy after dinner and waited half an hour,” Han said.

Feeling no effects, she took another gummy, then one more — a total of four over several hours.

Han advises patients who are trying cannabis to “start low; go slow,” beginning with products that contain just 1 or 2.5 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient that many cannabis products contain. Each of the four gummies this patient took, however, contained 10 milligrams.

The woman started experiencing intense anxiety and heart palpitations. A young person might have shrugged off such symptoms, but this patient had high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, a heart arrhythmia. Frightened, she went to an emergency room.

Lab tests and a cardiac work-up determined the woman wasn’t having a heart attack, and the staff sent her home. Her only lingering symptom was embarrassment, Han said. But what if she’d grown dizzy or lightheaded and was hurt in a fall? He said he has had patients injured in falls or while driving after using cannabis. What if the cannabis had interacted with the prescription drugs she took?

“As a geriatrician, it gives me pause,” Han said. “Our brains are more sensitive to psychoactive substances as we age.”

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia now allow cannabis use for medical reasons, and in 24 of those states, as well as the district, recreational use is also legal. As older adults’ use climbs, “the benefits are still unclear,” Han said. “But we’re seeing more evidence of potential harms.”

A wave of recent research points to reasons for concern for older users, with cannabis-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations rising, and a Canadian study finding an association between such acute care and subsequent dementia. Older people are more apt than younger ones to try cannabis for therapeutic reasons: to relieve chronic pain, insomnia, or mental health issues, though evidence of its effectiveness in addressing those conditions remains thin, experts said.

In an analysis of national survey data published June 2 in the medical journal JAMA, Han and his colleagues reported that “current” cannabis use (defined as use within the previous month) had jumped among adults age 65 or older to 7% of respondents in 2023, from 4.8% in 2021. In 2005, he pointed out, fewer than 1% of older adults reported using cannabis in the previous year.

What’s driving the increase? Experts cite the steady march of state legalization — use by older people is highest in those states — while surveys show that the perceived risk of cannabis use has declined. One national survey found that a growing proportion of American adults — 44% in 2021 — erroneously thought it safer to smoke cannabis daily than cigarettes. The authors of the study, in JAMA Network Open, noted that “these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke.”

The cannabis industry also markets its products to older adults. The Trulieve chain gives a 10% discount, both in stores and online, to those it calls “wisdom” customers, 55 or older. Rise Dispensaries ran a yearlong cannabis education and empowerment program for two senior centers in Paterson, New Jersey, including field trips to its dispensary.

The industry has many satisfied older customers. Liz Logan, 67, a freelance writer in Bronxville, New York, had grappled with sleep problems and anxiety for years, but the conditions grew particularly debilitating two years ago, as her husband was dying of Parkinson’s disease. “I’d frequently be awake until 5 or 6 in the morning,” she said. “It makes you crazy.”

Looking online for edible cannabis products, Logan found that gummies containing cannabidiol, known as CBD, alone didn’t help, but those with 10 milligrams of THC did the trick without noticeable side effects. “I don’t worry about sleep anymore,” she said. “I’ve solved a lifelong problem.”

But studies in the United States and Canada, which legalized nonmedical cannabis use for adults nationally in 2018, show climbing rates of cannabis-related health care use among older people, both in outpatient settings and in hospitals.

In California, for instance, cannabis-related emergency room visits by those 65 or older rose, to 395 per 100,000 visits in 2019 from about 21 in 2005. In Ontario, acute care (meaning emergency visits or hospital admissions) resulting from cannabis use increased fivefold in middle-aged adults from 2008 to 2021, and more than 26 times among those 65 and up.

“It’s not reflective of everyone who’s using cannabis,” cautioned Daniel Myran, an investigator at the Bruyère Health Research Institute in Ottawa and lead author of the Ontario study. “It’s capturing people with more severe patterns.”

But since other studies have shown increased cardiac risk among some cannabis users with heart disease or diabetes, “there’s a number of warning signals,” he said.

For example, a disturbing proportion of older veterans who currently use cannabis screen positive for cannabis use disorder, a recent JAMA Network Open study found.

As with other substance use disorders, such patients “can tolerate high amounts,” said the lead author, Vira Pravosud, a cannabis researcher at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education. “They continue using even if it interferes with their social or work or family obligations” and may experience withdrawal if they stop.

Among 4,500 older veterans (with an average age of 73) seeking care at Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities, researchers found that more than 10% had reported cannabis use within the previous 30 days. Of those, 36% fit the criteria for mild, moderate, or severe cannabis use disorder, as established in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

VA patients differ from the general population, Pravosud noted. They are much more likely to report substance misuse and have “higher rates of chronic diseases and disabilities, and mental health conditions like PTSD” that could lead to self-medication, she said.

Current VA policies don’t require clinicians to ask patients about cannabis use. Pravosud thinks that they should.

Moreover, “there’s increasing evidence of a potential effect on memory and cognition,” said Myran, citing his team’s study of Ontario patients with cannabis-related conditions going to emergency departments or being admitted to hospitals.

Compared with others of the same age and sex who were seeking care for other reasons, research shows these patients (ages 45 to 105) had 1.5 times the risk of a dementia diagnosis within five years, and 3.9 times the risk of that for the general population.

Even after adjusting for chronic health conditions and sociodemographic factors, those seeking acute care resulting from cannabis use had a 23% higher dementia risk than patients with noncannabis-related ailments, and a 72% higher risk than the general population.

None of these studies were randomized clinical trials, the researchers pointed out; they were observational and could not ascertain causality. Some cannabis research doesn’t specify whether users are smoking, vaping, ingesting or rubbing topical cannabis on aching joints; other studies lack relevant demographic information.

“It’s very frustrating that we’re not able to provide more individual guidance on safer modes of consumption, and on amounts of use that seem lower-risk,” Myran said. “It just highlights that the rapid expansion of regular cannabis use in North America is outpacing our knowledge.”

Still, given the health vulnerabilities of older people, and the far greater potency of current cannabis products compared with the weed of their youth, he and other researchers urge caution.

“If you view cannabis as a medicine, you should be open to the idea that there are groups who probably shouldn’t use it and that there are potential adverse effects from it,” he said. “Because that is true of all medicines.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Green Dragon will close its Denver cultivation plant at 830 Wyandot St. in the Lincoln Park neighborhood at the end of the month, according to Cory Azzalino, CEO of Green Dragon’s California-based parent company Eaze.

“It’s not economical despite our team’s best effort to improve yields,” he said of running the 92,000-square-foot building. “At the end of the day, the facility costs substantially more to run than to buy product in the market. You’d either have to double yield or have the market price double for it to make sense.”

A down Colorado marijuana market is a major driver in the decision, Azzalino said.

According to the Colorado Department of Revenue, the average price for a pound of bud is $655, down from a recent high of about $1,300 in October 2021. State tax revenue from marijuana sales has dropped each of the past four years and is tracking to do the same in 2025.

About 45 employees will be let go as part of the shuttering, Azzalino said. He said Denver’s rising minimum wage over the past four to five years also contributed to the financial pinch.

“The facility was about to go through a union contract negotiation and process, which would likely increase costs further,” he added.

Despite the closure, Azzalino said Green Dragon’s 15 Colorado dispensaries will remain open with third-party cannabis.

“We’ll buy and we’ll continue to offer our Green Dragon products, rather than growing cannabis or producing our own pre-rolls,” he said.

According to previous BusinessDen reporting, Green Dragon’s lease at 830 Wyandot will expire in January 2031. Texas-based landlord Don Ball, who bought the property in October for $11.5 million, said he’s unsure whether he will continue to receive the $145,000 monthly rent payment he’s owed.

“The first time I talked to Cory, he said, ‘My intention is to pay you on time for a long time,’” said Ball, who recently acquired another Denver marijuana grow. “But he said business declined sharply over the last few months.”

Ball hopes to get another cannabis growing tenant in there soon — something Eaze attorneys said can happen “promptly” in a notice-to-vacate letter sent to him.

“I’ll be as cooperative as I possibly can be because it’s just as much in their interest as it is in mine,” Ball said of getting the space re-leased.

Ball said he still hasn’t gotten the rent owed in early June, which incurs a $400 fee and 1% monthly interest.

“I prefer not to comment because it’s going to be a legal battle,” Azzalino said of future monthly payments.

This isn’t the first time Eaze has talked of closing the facility.

In October, Azzalino told BusinessDen that Green Dragon would cease all Colorado operations, including the grow and its dispensaries, which totaled 17 at the time, before recent closures in Glenwood Springs and Cherry Creek.

Weeks later, in November, Eaze got an infusion of $10 million from its owner, Jim Clark, to remain operating. Clark, the billionaire founder of the defunct tech firm Netscape, foreclosed on Eaze’s assets last August for $54 million.

Eaze, which also operates in Florida and Michigan, acquired Green Dragon nearly four years ago.

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