World's first legalised marijuana retailer opened
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DENVER- The world's first state-licensed marijuana retailers legally permitted to sell pot for recreational use opened for business in Colorado on Wednesday with long lines of customers, marking a new chapter in America's drug culture.
Roughly three dozen former medical marijuana dispensaries newly cleared by state regulators to sell pot to consumers interested in nothing more than its mind- and mood-altering properties began welcoming customers as early as 8 a.m. MST (1500 GMT).
Hundreds of patrons, some from distant states and many huddling outside in the bitter cold and snow for hours, cued up to be among the first buyers.
"This is an historic moment," Jacob Elliott, 31, a defense contractor from Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., said in line outside the 3D Cannabis Center in Denver. "I never thought it would happen."
The highly-anticipated New Year's Day opening launched an unprecedented commercial cannabis market that Colorado officials expect will ultimately gross $578 million in annual revenues, including $67 million in tax receipts for the state.
Possession, cultivation and private personal consumption of marijuana by adults for the sake of just getting high has already been legal in Colorado for more than a year under a state constitutional amendment approved by voters.
Cheri Hackett, (C) co-owner of the Botana Care marijuana store celebrates just before opening her doors to customers for the first time in Northglenn, Colorado January 1, 2014.
As of Wednesday, however, cannabis was being legally produced, sold and taxed in a system modeled after a regime many states have in place for alcohol sales - but which exists for marijuana nowhere in the world outside of Colorado.
Even in the Netherlands, where some coffee shops and nightclubs are widely known to sell cannabis products with the informal consent of authorities, back-end distribution of the drug to those businesses remains illegal.
Customer No. 1 at Botana Care in the Denver suburb of Northglenn was Jesse Phillips, 32, an assembly-line worker who had camped outside the shop since 1 a.m.
A staffer talks to people waiting in line
to be among the first to legally buy recreational marijuana at the Botana Care store
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH
"I wanted to be one of the first to buy pot and no longer be prosecuted for it. This end of prohibition is long overdue," Phillips said.
A cheer from about 100 fellow customers as Phillips made his purchase, an eighth-ounce sampler pack containing four strains of weed - labeled with names such as "King Tut Kush" and "Gypsy Girl" - that sold for $45 including tax.
He also bought a child-proof carry pouch required by state regulations to transport his purchase out of the store.
Back at 3D Cannabis, two patrons from Blanchester, Ohio, - Brandon Harris and his friend Tyler Williams, both 24 - said they had been waiting since 2:30 a.m. for doors to open.
"We wanted to be the first people from Ohio to buy it legally," Harris said.
Robin Hackett, 51, co-owner of Botana Care, said she expected between 800 to 1,000 first-day customers, and hired a private security firm to help with any traffic and parking issues that might arise.
Two inspectors from the Colorado Department of Revenue were on site as the shop was set to open. "We're just here to help with compliance issues," one of them, Dave Miller said.
Hackett said she has 50 lbs (23 kg) of product on hand, and to avoid a supply shortage the shop will limit purchases to quarter-ounces on Wednesday, including joints, raw buds, cannabis-infused edibles such as pastries or candies, and even infused soaps, oils and lotions.
Like other stores, Botana Care also stocked related wares, including pipes, rolling papers and bongs.
Voters in Washington state voted to legalize marijuana at the same time Colorado did, in November 2012, but Washington is not slated to open its first retail establishments until later in 2014.
TURNING POINT IN DRUG CULTURE
Still, supporters and detractors alike see the two Western states as setting a course that could mark the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition at the national level.
"The era of marijuana prohibition is officially over in Colorado," said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project.
Customers look over their choices
"Making marijuana legal for adults is not an experiment," he told a news conference. "Prohibition was the experiment and the results were abysmal."
He and other supporters of the change point to tax revenues to be gained and argue that anti-marijuana enforcement has accomplished little over the years but to penalize otherwise law-abiding citizens, especially minorities.
Critics say anticipated social harms of legalization, from declines in economic productivity to a rise in traffic and workplace accidents, outweigh any benefits.
They also warn that legalizing recreational use could help create an industry intent on attracting underage users and getting more people dependent on the drug.
Cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law, though the Obama administration has said it will give individual states leeway to carry out their own recreational-use statutes.
Nearly 20 states, including Colorado and Washington, had already put themselves at odds with the U.S. government by approving marijuana for medical purposes.
Comparing the nascent pot market to the alcohol industry, former U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy, co-founder of Project Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said his group aims to curtail marijuana advertising and to help push local bans on the drug while the industry is still modest in stature.
"This is a battle that if we catch it early enough we can prevent some of the most egregious adverse impacts that have happened as a result of the commercialized market that promotes alcohol use to young people," he said.
Under Colorado law, however, state residents can buy as much as an ounce (28 grams) of marijuana at a time, while out-of-state visitors are restricted to quarter-ounce purchases.
Restraint was certainly the message being propagated on New Year's Eve by Colorado authorities, who posted signs at Denver International Airport and elsewhere around the capital warning that pot shops can only operate during approved hours, and that open, public consumption of marijuana remains illegal.
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cool. Is marijuana and cannabis the same plant? What about ganja, is it marijuana or cannabis?
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Originally posted by spidey3:
cool. Is marijuana and cannabis the same plant? What about ganja, is it marijuana or cannabis?
If they get you high, then it should be the same. Likewise weeds and grass.
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Originally posted by NeverSayGoodBye:
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Legalization of marijuana
A long line of buyers trails from a store selling marijuana in Pueblo West, Colo, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. The nation's first recreational pot industry opened in Colorado on Wednesday, kicking off a marijuana experiment that will be watched closely around the world
Employee David Marlow, right, helps a customer, who smells a strain of marijuana before buying it,
An employee weighs portions of retail marijuana to be packaged and sold at 3D Cannabis Center in Denver, Tuesday Dec. 31, 2013. Colorado
Customer Adam Hartle makes a cash transaction, one of the first to buy
Containers for retail marijuana await filling at 3D Cannabis Center in Denver
Cheri Hackett, co-owner of BotanaCare, carries bags of the company's sample packs of various strains of marijuana prepared for the store opening tomorrow in Northglenn, Colorado
Various marijuana strains are prepared at the Botanacare marijuana store for their grand opening on New Year's day in Northglenn, Colorado December 31, 2013
Skylar Hall prepares marijuana buds for sale at the Botanacare marijuana store ahead of their grand opening
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Colorado marijuana shops make $28,000 each on the FIRST DAY of legalized pot
- Stores reporting $10,000 in sales in first few hours of Colorado's marijuana legalization
- 'Adult use' pot projected to be a $208 million industry in the state in 2014
- About $1 million made across 35 pot shops in Denver on 'Green Wednesday', January 1, with an average of $28,000 each
- Businesses now trying to triple their plant stock to keep up with demand
It's a bona fide industry that is, officially, only five days old - but represents hundreds of millions of dollars.
As Colorado comes close to closing out the first week of its 'green rush', with recreational marijuana stores legally allowed to sell the drug from January 1 under revolutionary new state laws, official sales figures and profit margins have started rolling in.
'Adult use' pot is projected to be a $208 million industry in Colorado this year - on top of the $250 million projected to be spent on medical marijuana, Betty Aldworth, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, told CNN.
One business alone, the Lodo Wellness Center in Denver, which is described as a 'boutique' marijuana store that is cash-only, recorded $10,000 in sales in the first few hours of Wednesday.
Don Andrews (center) - owner of the LoDo Wellness Center in Denver, which recorded $10,000 cash in the first few hours of sales on Jan. 1 - talks with out-of-town customers out front of his store
Customers wait in line to enter LoDo Wellness, which by noon had given out more than 600 entrance tickets on the first day of retail sales of marijuana in Colorado on Wednesday, January 1, 2014
While the owners, married couple Donald and Linda Andrews - who started the store in 2000 as a medical marijuana dispensary, foreseeing the substance one day becoming legal - told CNN they made more in one day than they would normally in one month.
Although not divulging the figure, the pair said they served about 1,000 customers, with the majority buying an eighth of an ounce, priced between $40 and $50.
The estimated total sits around $50,000 for day one.
In all, about $1 million in business was done at about 35 pot shops on the first day of marijuana's legalization in Colorado, Aldworth estimated, giving each an average first day earning of $28,000.
While that business is unlikely to continue, with people flying in from all over the country, as well as Canada and Australia, to be among the historic first to buy legal weed, pot shop owners are looking to increase their number of plants several-fold.
All business must grow their own marijuana, under the laws.
All plants are grown indoors, and the law limits to six the number of plants grown under each light fixture.
An employee radio frequency tracking tags - required by law - to pot plants maturing inside a grow house at 3D Cannabis Center. Almost all businesses are looking to expand the number of plants in response to skyrocketing sales
Garrett Sellars, 21, shows an edible to Ashly Carius, 21, both of Oklahoma City, as the shop at LoDo Wellness Center
The Medicine Man dispensary in Denver, the largest in the state, has 5,000 plants, meaning an operation of over 830 lights, and are looking to triple their plant stock to 15,000.
Evergreen Apothecary in Denver served 400 customers on opening day and now plans to increase its plants from 2,000 to as many as 24,000.
'This is unquestionably a tremendous growth industry,' Aldworth said.
'There hasn't been an opportunity like this in American history in quite some time.
'The tech boom had an impact on the American economy, but I think this could rival it.
'We're not creating a market out of nothing.
'We are just shifting it from the underground market.'
Nationwide, government-regulated marijuana is projected to double this year, to $2.3 billion from about $1 billion last year.
A customer excitedly enters the LoDo Wellness Center in Denver
That 2013 figure came solely from medical marijuana sales in more than a dozen states.
Several states are creating the growth.
Colorado and Washington are the first two states with legalized recreational marijuana, and Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada and Oregon will allow medical cannabis shops to open in 2014.
Washington's recreational weed will go on sale later this year.
Pot promises to be such big business that advocates are planning voter initiatives for legalizing recreational use in several other states by 2016.
- Stores reporting $10,000 in sales in first few hours of Colorado's marijuana legalization