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 When legalized marijuana became available for sale with the New
Year, out-of-state tourists joined Coloradans in lining up at
authorized retailers, despite the federal ban on the substance.
Colorado, under a 2012 voter-approved referendum, allowed the
world's first state-licensed marijuana retailers to open for
business on New Year's Day and legally sell pot for recreational
use. At a number of the roughly three dozen former medical marijuana
dispensaries cleared by state regulators to sell the drug, lines of
customers formed outside the door.
An estimated $1 million in pot sales took place in Colorado on New
Year's Day, said Betty Aldworth, deputy director of National
Cannabis Industry Association.
Despite this potential customer base, the state's world-renowned ski
resorts remain wary.
"There has been a law on the books since the 1970s in Colorado that
makes it illegal to ski, board or even get on a ski lift if under
the influence," said Jennifer Rudolph, spokeswoman for Colorado Ski
Country USA, an industry trade group that counts most of Colorado's
26 ski resorts as members.
Like the ski resorts, state tourism officials are also keeping a
distance.
The Colorado Tourism Office "has no plans to use the legalization to
promote the state," it said in a statement.
Moreover, it was impossible to forecast how the law may impact
tourism, which generated an estimated $16.7 billion in direct travel
spending in 2012, the office said.
"SKI ACCESSORY"?
Whatever the size of the market, companies such as Colorado Green
Tours want a piece of it.
The firm bills itself as a "full-service cannabis friendly" travel
agency and has organized ski vacation trips, said Peter Johnson, the
company's founder. The company encourages use of the drug after
skiing, not before, he said.
"Colorado is obviously well known for world-class skiing," Johnson
said. "Now with cannabis being legal, that's kind of a fashionable
ski accessory, if you will."
Matt Brown, co-founder of the Colorado-based firm My 420 Tours, said
his company has more than 4,000 people on the waiting list for
upcoming tours, which he compared to a jaunt through California's
Napa Valley wine country.
"We're that friend who lives in Colorado who can help introduce you
and really show you things that just don't exist outside of our
state," Brown said.
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At legal marijuana stores in the Denver area on Wednesday, a number
of customers said they came from other states, including Virginia,
Ohio and Illinois.
Massachusetts visitor Nicole, 24, a legal assistant who declined to
give her last name, said in a phone interview on Thursday she and
her boyfriend planned a trip to Colorado a month in advance to buy
marijuana, and they purchased a gram of the strain "sour diesel."
"We wanted to be part of this," she said. "It was largely symbolic."
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 in 2012.
The law has presented new challenges for law enforcement officials,
who are aware legalization could bring marijuana tourists to the
state's ski slopes.
San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, whose county includes the
Telluride Ski Resort, said enforcing laws about no public
consumption of marijuana would be difficult for so-called infused
pot products that are edible and mind-altering.
"Is seeing people passing around a lollipop probable cause to take
some enforcement action? Probably not," he said.
Denver police and the Colorado State Patrol reported a smooth first
day of legalized pot sales in the state.
Colorado has acted faster to authorize sales than Washington state,
whose voters legalized marijuana at the same time as Colorado in
2012. Washington is scheduled to open its first retail
establishments later this year.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in August it would not seek
to interfere with the two states' efforts to regulate and tax
marijuana sales, and instead would focus on such areas as
restricting the flow of the drug across state lines and keeping it
away from minors.
(Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Daniel Trotta and Lisa
Shumaker)
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