Pubdate: Thu, 26 Dec 2013
Source: Forbes Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2013 Forbes Inc.
Contact:  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/current/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/769
Author: Michael Humphrey

WELCOME TO COLORADO, WHERE MARIJUANA TOURISM IS GOING TO BE STICKY

"Colorado will be leaving prohibition behind in the new year," Mason
Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project,
told CNN the other day. 2014 is the year pot officially comes out of
the smoky shadow and the Internet is burning up with
anticipation.

But living in Colorado the past year, you get used to the clash of
expectation and reality. The first misunderstandings are fairly
simple: Pot did not suddenly replace cigarettes as the smoke of choice
in public, which explains why tickets for public pot smoking nearly
quadrupled in Boulder since Amendment 64.

But another stand-out misunderstanding is what this does to the
visitor to Colorado.

"I don't see the places where you can buy pot," someone mentioned to
me at a convention in Denver last spring. "Where is all the pot smoking?"

The fact is that the first real signs of the election's effects were
something verging on regret. Many worried about federal raids and how
to enforce laws around driving while high, few counties actually
approved retail sales, debates about the logistics of buying, carrying
and smoking raged. Many of the results of these conversations looked
like a course correction. Last month, for instance, Coloradans marked
the anniversary of Amendment 64 by levying a major tax on retail pot
sales.

So this is what we know for the tourist: you can buy a little, but
it's going to cost you, you can't take it across state lines and where
you smoke it is going to be seriously tricky. This Q&A from the state
will give you some sense of that:

Where am I allowed to consume retail marijuana? Answer - Retail
marijuana is intended for private, personal use. Such use is only
legal in certain locations not open or accessible to the public.
Marijuana may not be consumed openly or publicly. Are marijuana
"social clubs" or "coffee shops" permitted? Answer - No. These
businesses are not permitted. So... It might explain why "Colorado
marijuana laws" as a search term experienced massive growth in 2013.
All the headlines about pot tourism here has clouded the fact that,
for a tourist, actually smoking the stuff legally could prove difficult.

"It's really prohibition under a different name," advocate Rob Corry
told Colorado Public Radio recently. "It's prohibition by
over-regulation and over-restriction."

Ironically, places where smoking has been de facto acceptable for
decades (concerts) could face more scrutiny because of legalization,
especially if venues promote shows as being pot-friendly. In the same
CPR piece, the Denver city councilman who pushed successfully for
banning smoking in parks, Chris Nevitt, questioned whether much
tourism was really going to result from pot legalization.

Serious pot advocates will come to Colorado. There are plenty of
entrepreneurs who are working on solutions to some of the problems the
regulations create. Certain hotels might allow smoking too. For
smokers who already skirt the law, Colorado will be both symbolically
and even practically an important change of pace.

But for those who sit on the fence - who do not want to the break the
law but also aren't morally or personally opposed to pot smoking -
Colorado pot tourism might be more hassle than it's worth. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D