DENVER: The world’s first state-licensed marijuana retailers, catering to Colorado’s newly legal recreational market for pot, are stocking their shelves ahead of a New Year’s grand opening that supporters and detractors alike see as a turning point in America’s drug culture.
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 year under a state constitutional amendment approved by voters. But starting on January 1, cannabis will be legally sold and taxed at specially regulated retailers in a system modelled after a regime many states have in place for selling drinks— but which exists for marijuana nowhere outside of Colorado.
For the novelty factor alone, operators of the first eight marijuana retailers slated to open on Wednesday morning in Denver and a handful of establishments in other locations are anticipating a surge in demand for store-bought weed.
“It will be like people waiting in line for tickets to a Pink Floyd concert,” said Justin Jones, 39, owner of Dank Colorado in Denver who has run a medical marijuana shop for four years and now has a recreational pot licence.
Jones said he is confident he has enough marijuana on hand for Day One but less sure of inventory levels needed after that.
About 90 percent of his merchandise is in smokable form, packaged in small child-proof containers. The rest is a mixture of cannabis-infused edibles, such as cookies, candy and carbonated drinks. “People seem to prefer smoking,” he said.
Washington state voters legalised recreational marijuana at the same time Colorado did, in November 2012, but it has yet to be made commercially available there. Pot designated strictly for medical use has been sold for some time in storefront shops in several of the nearly 20 states, including Colorado and Washington, that have deemed marijuana legal for health purposes.
But Colorado is the first to open retail pot stores, and craft a regulatory framework to license, tax and enforce its use for recreation.
Outside of the United States, Uruguay’s parliament recently cleared the way for state-sanctioned marijuana sales, but the South American nation is at least months away from having a system in place. REUTERS
