cannabisnews.com: Colorado Stores Throw Open Doors To MJ Buyers
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Colorado Stores Throw Open Doors To MJ Buyers
Posted by CN Staff on January 01, 2014 at 15:55:10 PT
By Jack Healy
Source: New York Times
Denver -- Customers began lining up before dawn on Wednesday to take part in what they called a historic departure from drug laws focused on punishment and prohibition. Many had flown in or driven hours specifically to buy a bag of marijuana. At the Medicine Man dispensary in Denver, which claims it is the closest marijuana retailer to the airport, as many as half the customers were from out of state, here for the first day that marijuana could be sold legally in Colorado.
The store’s owner, Andy Williams, said he had redesignated about 60 percent of his medical marijuana to be sold retail but worried that it would not be enough to meet the demands of the lines snaking out the door. Despite the long lines, Mr. Williams said, people seemed thrilled to be able to walk into a shop, lay down $50 or $60 and openly buy the drug. “This is Independence Day for the marijuana community,” he said. “People don’t like breaking the law. The burden has been taken off them. “ With security guards posted outside many stores and police and state officials watching closely, the day’s first sales appeared to go smoothly, officials said. “So far so good,” said Ron Kammerzell, director of enforcement for Colorado’s Department of Revenue. Mr. Kammerzell said the state had eight investigators checking retailers’ licenses, inspecting packaging and labeling, and ensuring that stores checked each customer’s identification to see if they were 21 or older. To supporters, Wednesday was a watershed moment in the country’s tangled relationship with the ubiquitous recreational drug. They celebrated with speeches, hailing it as akin to the end of Prohibition, albeit with joints being passed instead of champagne being uncorked. To skeptics, it marked a grand folly, one they said would lead to higher drug use among teenagers and more impaired drivers on the roads, and would tarnish the image of a state whose official song is John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” The governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver both opposed legalization, and stayed away from the smoky celebrations on Wednesday. While some 20 states allow medical marijuana, voters in Colorado and Washington State decided last year to go one step further, becoming the first in the nation to legalize small amounts of the drug for recreational use and regulate it like alcohol. Ever since, the states have been racing to devise rules detailing how to grow it, sell it, tax it and track it. In both Colorado and Washington, recreational marijuana has been legal for more than a year. Adults can smoke it in their living rooms, and eat marijuana-laced cookies without fear of arrest. In Colorado, they are even allowed to grow up to six plants at home. But until Wednesday, dispensaries could sell only to customers with a doctor’s recommendation and state-issued medical-marijuana card. Now, any Colorado resident who is 21 can buy up to an ounce of marijuana at one of the 40 dispensaries that began selling to retail customers on Wednesday. Out-of-state visitors can buy a quarter-ounce, but they have to use it within the state. Carrying marijuana across state lines remains illegal, and the plant is not allowed at the Denver International Airport. “This is our dream,” said Kirstin Knouse, 24, who flew here from Chicago with her husband, Tristan, to take their first-ever marijuana vacation. She said that she suffered from seizures and fibromyalgia, and her husband from post-traumatic stress, but that the couple had not been able to get medical marijuana at home. “We’re thinking about moving here because of it,” Ms. Knouse said. Washington’s marijuana system is at least several months behind Colorado, meaning that fully stocked retail shelves probably will not be a reality at the consumer level until perhaps June. While Colorado incorporates the existing medical marijuana system, Washington is starting from scratch, with all of the production and sale of recreational marijuana linked to the new system of licenses, which will not be issued until late February or early March. “After that, it’s up to the industry to get it up and running,” said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which regulates the system and is processing almost 5,000 license applications to grow, process or sell. Growers can start a crop only after they get a license, Mr. Carpenter said, and retailers can sell only marijuana produced in-state by licensed growers when that crop comes in. With the advent of legal, recreational marijuana, Colorado and Washington have become national petri dishes for drug policy. Their successes or failures will be watched closely by Arizona, Alaska, California, Oregon and other states flirting with the idea of liberalizing their marijuana laws. Questions still abound. Will drug traffickers take marijuana across state lines, to sell elsewhere? Will recreational marijuana flow from the hands of legal adult consumers to teenagers? Will taxes from pot sales match optimistic predictions of a windfall for state budgets? What will happen to the black market for marijuana? Skeptical federal authorities are also paying attention. Although marijuana remains illegal under federal law, the Justice Department has given a tentative approval for Colorado and Washington to move ahead with regulating marijuana. But it warned that federal officials could intervene if the state regulations failed to keep the drug away from children, drug cartels or federal property, and out of other states. Kirk Johnson contributed reporting from Seattle. Source: New York Times (NY)Author:  Jack HealyPublished: January 1, 2014Copyright: 2014 The New York Times CompanyContact: letters nytimes.comWebsite: http://www.nytimes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/CJBBNYSoCannabisNews  -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #8 posted by The GCW on January 03, 2014 at 05:09:08 PT
Hope,
Thank You.There is still plenty of work to do.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #7 posted by Hope on January 02, 2014 at 15:42:54 PT
The GCW
I want to thank you for not resting on your laurels. And you do have laurels, as far as I'm concerned. Plenty of them. Your statement that you're still with us and still up front, even though you live in the great state of Colorado and can now freely purchase your herbs in a store, on the up and up, and possess them without fear of a destroying ninja throwing you to the ground after they break into your home, you have not forgotten the rest of us and are still going to be with us, to help us in the continued struggle for peace and freedom. Thank you, so much, my dear friend.
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Comment #6 posted by The GCW on January 02, 2014 at 04:35:33 PT
Lines
Breck retail marijuana shops open with plenty of greenThe lines rivaled any Black Friday, but this was no day after Thanksgiving discount deal. Rather, “Green Wednesday,” the first day of recreational marijuana sales in Colorado, brought out visitors and residents alike to legally purchase pot.Breckenridge Cannabis Club (BCC), located downtown on Main Street, opened at 8 a.m. to an exuberant line. Customers high-fived each other as purchases were made, and those still waiting for their turn cheered as others made their way back down the stairs, brown paper bags in hand.Cont.http://www.summitdaily.com/news/9571468-113/marijuana-product-retail-sales
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Comment #5 posted by Paulpot on January 01, 2014 at 22:32:31 PT:
Tear down this Wall.
Thank you to the good people of Colorado. 
You are proving that there never was a reason for police state, military reprisals against cannabis consumers. 
If that had not been proven already by 20+ yrs of decriminalization and medical marijuana in the US and around the world.
Mr. Obama. 
Tear down this Wall.
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Comment #4 posted by The GCW on January 01, 2014 at 21:44:28 PT
HEAR YEE, HEAR YEE, THIS says it ALL.
Legal marijuana: Summit County pot shops overrun with bud buyers on day onehttp://www.summitdaily.com/news/9573980-113/marijuana-brown-healing-summit"""...Nick Brown, owner of High Country Healing in Silverthorne, opened his doors at 10 a.m. By 3:30 p.m. he estimated more than 300 people had been through his shop.“I’m still pinching myself right now,” Brown said. “I knew it would be big, but I never thought it would be this big.”Brown estimated about half of his customers Wednesday were from out of state and waited in line for upwards of 40 minutes for their turn to enter High Country Healing. Brown also was able to steal some of the Denver market. One Front Range couple, after learning lines at Denver marijuana shops were four to five hours long (LINES 4 TO 5 HOURS LONG -TGCW), opted to make the snowy drive to Silverthorne instead, Brown said....“I don’t think the phone has rung this much in a year, maybe two years,” Mlatecek said. “It’s been ringing off the hook for three days straight.”Despite the excitement of finally embarking into a new industry and a booming first day of business, Brown said marijuana’s obvious widespread appeal is going to cause him some headaches in the very near future. With restrictions on the size of grow operations and limitations on expansion in place, Brown fears it won’t be long before he runs out of product to sell.“The way things have gone today only confirms my suspicion that there is going to be a marijuana shortage in Colorado,” Brown said. “The demand is exponentially higher than the supply.”-0-From Summit County.
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Comment #3 posted by The GCW on January 01, 2014 at 21:04:03 PT
FoM, C-News'ers, Activists,
Another notch. Today. Leaving a year of many notches, We start this year out with another notch on day 1. And a BIG notch it is.-0-Just heard Lionel Richie's, Easy. What an appropriate song for the occasion. (It looks like Youtube may be wanting people to sign up now, so search, or just remember.)I know it sounds funny but I just can't stand the pain.Why would anybody want to put chains on Me?I wanna get highSo high.I wanna be free to know the things I do are right.-0-We're not done, either.Tomorrow is another work day.Our work is not done till responsible adults in Our fee country are free to use the God-given superplant without fear of being caged or punished.Ohio, Missouri, Texas, Florida, New York, Oregon, Alaska, Mississippi, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Hawaii, California, Arkansas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, N. & S. Carolina and Dakota, Connecticut, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Idaho, Vermont, Iowa, Minnesota, Delaware, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana, Utah, Massachusetts, Virginia and W. Virginia, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Wyoming and Washington DC. 
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on January 01, 2014 at 19:05:50 PT
The Article Is Expanded
To get the whole article please click on The New York Times link I'm posting.URL: http://drugsense.org/url/CJBBNYSo
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Comment #1 posted by HempWorld on January 01, 2014 at 18:45:31 PT
Yes, throw open those proverbial "Doors!"
World-wide! (the doors of perception)Thank you Rocky (see AMA 'decision' recently) (not), it's over, power to, we the people!
It's over!
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