Partygoers smoke marijuana during a Prohibition-era themed New Year's Eve party celebrating the start of retail pot sales, at a bar in Denver, late Tuesday Dec. 31, 2013. Colorado began marijuana retail sales on Jan. 1, a day some are calling ‘Green Wednesday.' (Image source: AP/Brennan Linsley)
Story by the Associated Press; curated by Dave Urbanski
DENVER (AP) — The nation's first recreational pot industry opened in Colorado on Wednesday, kicking off a marijuana experiment that will be watched closely around the world. Already, it is attracting people from across the country.
Here's a smattering of what happened in Denver, the Mile High City, and elsewhere in the state, on the historic day:
Less than a year ago, James Aaron Ramsey was serving a brief jail sentence for pot possession. On Wednesday, the 28-year-old musician, having driven from Missouri, was among the first to legally buy weed.
He brought a guitar and strummed folk tunes for about 20 people waiting outside one dispensary for sales to begin, as light snow fell at times.
Customers stand in a snaking line numbering several hundred people, shortly after the opening of 3D Cannabis Center, which opened as a legal recreational retail outlet in Denver at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. Colorado began retail marijuana sales on Jan. 1, a day some are calling "Green Wednesday." (Image source: AP/Brennan Linsley)
"I'm going to frame the receipt when I go home," Ramsey said with a smile. "To remind myself of what might be possible. Legal everywhere."
Others who were waiting in line shared their own pot incarceration stories over coffee and funnel cakes.
"They made me go to rehab for marijuana, but I'd get out and see all my underage friends getting drunk all the time," said 24-year-old Brandon Harris, who drove 20 hours from Blanchester, Ohio.
"I had to do pee tests, probation visits, the whole thing, Trafficking conviction. Nineteen years old. For a plant, how stupid," he said, shaking his head.
Tinted windows on a black limousine idling outside one Denver dispensary showed another side of the newly legal weed market — people eager to try legal marijuana, but not ready to be seen publicly buying it.
Partygoers smoke marijuana during a Prohibition-era themed New Year's Eve party celebrating the start of retail pot sales, at a bar in Denver, late Tuesday Dec. 31, 2013. Colorado began marijuana retail sales on Jan. 1 (Image source: AP/Brennan Linsley)
Addison Morris, owner of Rocky Mountain Mile High Tours, had 10 clients waiting in the limo who paid $295 for three hours of chauffeuring by a "marijuana concierge" who would help them choose strains and edible pot products.
"We're your grandmother's pot connection," the 63-year-old said. "We're not the hippie stoners who are going to stand in this cold and party."
Morris said she's booked through the end of February with out-of-state clients. Guests receive samples in designer bags before getting tours.
Morris said she's selling discretion. Guests are asked to leave cameras at home. They avoided the crowd at the dispensary, where younger shoppers noshed on funnel cakes and doughnuts from a food truck.
Asked if her guests wanted any of the carnival-style treats, Morris recoiled.
"Oh God no," she said. "We're going to Whole Foods for breakfast."
Not all marijuana users in Colorado are toasting the dawn of retail sales.
Some medical marijuana patients groups say they're worried about supply. That's because the retail inventory for recreational use is coming entirely from the preexisting medical inventory. Many in the industry warned patients to stock up before the sales began.
It was too soon to tell whether prices were going up. Laura Kriho of the Cannabis Therapy Institute said she worries prices will spike and patients will be left paying more if they're not able to grow their own.
A long line of buyers trails from a store selling marijuana in Pueblo West, Colo, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. The nation's first recreational pot industry opened in Colorado on Wednesday, kicking off a marijuana experiment that will be watched closely around the world. (Image source: AP/John Wark)
"We hope that the focus on recreational doesn't take the focus away from patients who really need this medicine," she said.
For now, medical patients should have plenty of places to shop. Most of Colorado's 500 or so medical marijuana shops haven't applied to sell recreational pot, and many that have plan to serve both recreational and medical patients
Some Green Wednesday openings were grand, with coffee and live music awaiting early shoppers. Others were more slapdash. As in, not sure until the sun went down New Year's Eve they'd have all their licensing and permitting to open.
The Clinic marked the opening of sales by turning on a Bob Marley CD and hurriedly putting out inventory.
Manager Ryan Cook didn't get clearance to open until Tuesday evening.
"Never thought we'd be able to get here, but we did it," a bleary-eyed Cook said, hustling around his shop after a long night waiting for new packaging bags compliant with new Colorado packaging regulations.
Here's a report from KDVR-TV in Denver:
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