It’s all going to pot in Colorado
Thousands line up as cannabis law goes into effect
Alex Lovato smiled broadly as he walked out of the Denver Kush Club with a quarter ounce of history in his hands.
The skinny 21-year-old chef had foregone New Year’s Eve drinking to make sure he was first in line to buy recreational cannabis legally as Colorado’s pot shops opened their doors to the public for the first time.
Like thousands of others across Denver, Lovato braved the snow and freezing temperatures as he waited for doors to open at 8 a.m.
After showing his ID to a gigantic security guard, he stepped inside to face a sweet-shop array of narcotic choices, with names such as Sweet Skunk, Lamb’s Breath and Amnesia Caviar.
But Lovato knew exactly what he was after and briskly selected a $100 bag of Sour Diesel, a potent hybrid strain of marijuana.
“I’ve been waiting for seven years for this and all I can do is smile,” he said, grinning underneath a woollen hat decorated with a cannabis leaf. “Now I’m going to go home, smoke it out of a bong and play video games.”
Lovato’s hazy afternoon plans may sound unambitious but they represent what could be the beginning of a new era of American drug policy.
Colorado’s cannabis law, which went into force at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, is the most liberal in the world. It allows for anyone over the age of 21 to buy the drug over the counter and to legally possess up to an ounce at a time. Under the new regulations Denver, already known as the Mile High City for its altitude, has overtaken Amsterdam as the West’s most progressive cannabis capital. In the Dutch city the drug remains technically illegal, although tolerated, and laws against possession outside of designated coffee shops are still enforced.
The owners of Denver’s 30 legal shops spent the first hours of 2014 engaged in industrial scale spliff-rolling and weed-bagging while entrepreneurial snack stalls were set up for the morning rush.
The snaking lines of buyers were kept under close watch by police. But the officers were less concerned about disorderly pot shoppers and more worried that pickpockets would target them: Under U.S. law it is still illegal to use credit cards for drug purchases and so the crowds arrived with pockets full of cash.
Their dollars are the first of what the state estimates will grow to a $600-million industry. Colorado officials expect to take $67 million a year in tax revenues and have committed the first $40 million to fund a new school-building program.
The state is bracing also for a mass influx of tourists. Travel companies with names such as Colorado Green Tours have already begun shepherding in visitors.
“Colorado is going to prove that regulating marijuana works, and it won’t be long before more states follow our lead,” said the Marijuana Policy Project, one of the groups that campaigned for the new law.
To illustrate the benefits of open access, the group organized for the symbolic first customer to be Sean Azzariti, an Iraq war veteran who uses the drug to sooth post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, opponents of the law warn of a darker side to the gleeful pot buying spree in Denver, warning of a “Big Marijuana” industry that will grow to be as indifferent to the public’s health as cigarette and alcohol companies. Patrick Kennedy, the son of Robert Kennedy and a former Congressman as well as a recovering drug addict, said states experimenting with legalization were “canaries in the coal mine,” adding: “We don’t have to have other states go down this road and have to learn the same hard lessons.”
The federal government has said that for now it will allow cannabis buying to go ahead in Colorado even though it remains technically illegal under national law. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” said U.S. President Barack Obama, who as a Hawaiian teenager was a member of the Choom Gang, a group of boys known for prodigious cannabis consumption.
Denver is a fitting stage for America’s first legal recreational drug deals, as it was also the scene of the first federal prosecution for possession of cannabis. The arrest of Samuel Caldwell, an unemployed labourer, in 1937 was the opening shot of a national “war on drugs.”