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A DECADE OF LEGAL CANNABIS IN COLORADO

By Ben Markus and Bente Birkeland, Colorado Public Radio
Monday, Jan 1, 2024 7:30 AM
Retail shelves at a LivWell cannabis dispensary in metro Denver. (Hart Van
Denburg/CPR News)
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

×

Retail shelves at a LivWell cannabis dispensary in metro Denver. (Hart Van
Denburg/CPR News)
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

A decade ago, it was hard to see the future through the haze.

Christian Sederberg, who campaigned for the legalization of cannabis for
recreational use, recalled driving around Denver that first day checking on the
stores that were open. The lines were long and the weather was cold with snow
flurries.

Related Stories


“But people were in great spirits, and people were singing songs and playing
music and yeah, it's hard to believe it's been 10 years, but man, what a
wonderful day that was,” Sederberg said.

Across town that day at Colorado Harvest Company on Broadway customers had been
lined up since two o’clock in the morning, despite the weather. Owner Tim Cullen
said the lines were long and it was hard to move people fast enough, he heard
some people grumbling about the wait.

An older man standing nearby in line put it in perspective.

“He turns around and he says, ‘Hey man, I don't care if we wait three hours. I
have been waiting for 62 years for this to happen, and here it is,” Cullen said.

On Jan. 1, 2014, dozens of reporters crowded into a dispensary in the RINO
neighborhood in Denver to witness the first legal sale of marijuana for
recreational use in the United States.

There were so many people in the small space that the “first sale” was done
twice to accommodate all the cameras.

“I think there was almost a physical altercation between a couple of guys
holding cameras,” Sederberg recalled. “There was 60 or 70 different outlets from
around the world there. It was wild.”

After that, it got wilder.

Ten years of economic impact

In the decade since those first stores opened to the public, Colorado has sold
$11.7 billion in cannabis from hundreds of stores across the state. That’s the
equivalent in ounces and edibles of a little more than 3.7 billion one-gram
joints sold at today’s (pretax) price of $3.15 a piece. Laid end-to-end, those
1.25-inch joints could circle the globe at the equator nearly three times.

Those sales have brought in $2.4 billion in taxes, funding everything from new
schools and school repairs in the rural part of the state to rec centers in the
cities.

At the same time, widespread cannabis access has neither been the unstoppable
economic force some of its most ardent backers expected, nor has it been the end
of polite society in Colorado, as forecast by some critics.

Instead, the scent of burning marijuana has become present, if not commonplace,
in the state’s urban centers. Nontraditional harvesting jobs have become
desirable in some rural parts of the state. And words like “budtender” (your
local dispensary expert) or “looping” (cheating on sales limits by revisiting
the dispensary) have become part of the lexicon.

Initial joy and remaining questions

But for all those gaudy statistics and expressions of joy, legalization
continues to raise vexing questions. Banking access has improved, but the
federal prohibition of the drug still makes access to capital difficult for the
industry and remains a pain in the neck for dispensaries and patrons.
Legalization has also failed to settle longstanding debates about youth usage
and whether it can be a gateway to harder drugs like opioids.

How cannabis legalization has affected Colorado's youth

Even though Colorado was the first state to legalize marijuana it divided the
political establishment at the time. Then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat,
opposed legalization.

“I was worried about the downsides that were widely predicted by experts, that
this would lead to a dramatic increase in experimentation and consumption and
frequency by young people,” he said at a gathering in Denver in August.

Hickenlooper, who is now a U.S. Senator, has changed his perspective,
acknowledging that it didn’t lead to a huge surge in use for young people.

“In many cases we're probably better off with more marijuana consumption,
probably less alcohol consumption, because they do seem to be related somewhat,
and certainly we're not any worse off,” he said.

“That's probably the better way to say it, with people smoking pot as part of
their relaxation or kickback process. We're not any worse off when people have a
drink or two.”

While marijuana usage has risen significantly in Colorado, rates of marijuana
use among adolescents actually fell since recreational legalization, according
to federal surveys of “use in past year.” Self-reported rates among 12 to 17
year-olds dropped from 20.8% when recreational sales started to 17.5% in the
most recent preliminary data. Youth marijuana use in Colorado, though, is still
much higher than for the rest of the U.S.

There’s some evidence linking youth use with an increased risk of later onset of
psychosis, and youth access to highly potent products has been a focus of state
lawmakers in recent years. These concentrates like hash oils and waxes can be
upward of 80% THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana.

Dawn Reinfeld, who heads the Boulder based group Blue Rising, has lobbied for
stricter labeling and tracking and purchasing limits in efforts to reduce youth
access to highly potent THC.

“Are they really thinking that a dab at 95% potency in birthday cake flavor has
very little or low potential for physical, psychological dependence? It's just
not real.”



She’s concerned that in the decade since legalization, state and federal
authorities don’t fully account for the negative impacts. She opposed the
recommendation from federal health officials in the summer of 2023 to reclassify
marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

“I would feel more comfortable if it felt like they were actually listening to
parents and communities and not the marijuana industry, which we know has been
lobbying them so hard for a decade,” she said.

Colorado lawmakers in both political parties and the leading cannabis industry
organizations found common ground on creating more stringent rules for medical
marijuana cards for 18-20 year olds and tightening the daily purchase limit.

“Just keeping focused on keeping out of the hands of kids,” Sederberg said. He
works as an adviser to the industry now. “Educating people about driving, public
safety, public health, that's what we keep beating the drum on. And I think it's
been a success so far.”

Some in the industry attribute the drop in youth use to the stringent
identification requirements for buyers in Colorado. Putting the license in
jeopardy is not worth the sale, according to the businesses. A cannabis business
license has become incredibly valuable, as many cities have caps on new
licenses.

“I bet there's an undercover officer who tries to make a sale with underage ID
in one of our establishments monthly,” Cullen said. “It's nonstop. And that has
been important to keep people on their toes.”

Ongoing challenges posed by federal law

This is only one of the considerable headaches of running a cannabis business,
even 10 years later, mostly because it remains federally illegal.

Because marijuana is listed as among the most dangerous drugs, businesses cannot
access federal tax breaks available to any other industry. Interstate commerce
is restricted, meaning states aren’t able to move product freely across borders.

The lack of full scale banking and finance keeps capital out of the industry –
there are small and large marijuana businesses that would like to sell, but
there’s little financing available. Without federal legalization, many corporate
name brands have stayed away from the industry for now.

There are no federal bankruptcy protections either, and that has become a larger
issue as the marijuana industry has entered its first downturn. Sales rose
sharply during the pandemic and new businesses started, but as sales have
dropped many of those new enterprises have suffered.

Some investors will lose money, and businesses will fold. No one forced them
into the business, though, and many cannabis entrepreneurs are still getting
rich, especially those that got in on the ground floor, ran conservative growth
plans, and have ideal locations.

Part of the pitch of marijuana legalization was not just to make money, but to
address some of the social injustices of a criminal conviction related to
marijuana.

Criminal marijuana possession arrests dropped 71% from 2012 to 2019, according
to a report from the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Juvenile case filings
fell by only one percent since legalization – it’s still illegal to possess any
amount of recreational marijuana for people under the age of 21.

While advocates praise the decline of marijuana prosecutions, the racial
disparity remains for the arrests that do occur. The marijuana arrest rate for
Blacks was more than double that for whites in Colorado. “This disparity has not
changed in any meaningful way since legalization,” reads the state report.

Still, it’s clear that cannabis is not quite counterculture anymore. The days
when Colorado was all alone selling a product are long gone.

“So fast forward 10 years and you have almost half the country with some form of
recreational legalization,” Cullen, who owns Colorado Harvest Company, said.
“Almost the entire country has some form of medical. CBD has swept the country
as well. It is a vastly different landscape than where we were 10 years ago.”

“The sky did not fall.”

You might also like
Colorado’s statewide e-bike program is so popular that it’s already used up its
initial funding
Dec 31, 2023
As the world ends the hottest year recorded, scientists say it’s getting harder
to predict Colorado’s climate
Dec 31, 2023
Colorado voters approved psilocybin mushrooms in 2022. Now the state is setting
up how they’ll be regulated
Dec 30, 2023

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