Visitors of Aspen Colorado Buying More Legal Marijuana than Booze
If it is possible, it would happen in Aspen Colorado. Colorado started offering recreational marijuana in 2014 and it seems the high altitudes are not that conducive to heavy drinking but fine for getting high. Aspen sits 8,000 feet up in the air and visitors can become rather light headed when they first arrive, especially if they are drinking alcohol. Marijuana turns out to be a nice alternative and so sales of cannabis have now surpassed that of alcohol sales.
It did not take long and it is rather surprising that legal marijuana is more popular anywhere than alcohol considering drinking alcohol is so ingrained into our society. All the same, Aspen is giving a whole new meaning to rocky mountain high.
Licensed vendors in the ski resort of Aspen raked in $11.3m (£8.2m) income from cannabis last year, compared to $10.5m (£7.6m) brought in by off-licences.
Aspen’s first cannabis shop opened in March 2014, three months after legislation for taxing and regulating sales came into force across Colorado. By the next year the resort, which has a population of less than 7,000, had seven licensed distributors.
Aspen’s cannabis sales grew 16 per cent last year compared to 2016, when shops brought in $9.7m (£7m) from the drug, said the city’s finance department. The marijuana industry is the fastest growing of Aspen’s 12 retail sectors, according to figures in an end-of-year sales tax report.
Aspen currently has six licensed cannabis vendors and five off-licences.
A study by Georgia State University last year found alcohol sales had tumbled 15 per cent in US states where medical marijuana had been legalised. Counties where cannabis could be legally obtained had 20 per cent lower alcohol sales than neighbouring counties across state borders where it was still outlawed.
Aspen is a beautiful spot no matter what time of the year, but plainly marijuana smokers think it is even better after they smoke a little. Do you think that this will be a continuing trend that as more states legalize cannabis, sales for legal marijuana will continue to overcome alcohol sales?
read more at independent.co.uk
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