Initial results from a study commissioned by Colorado state marijuana regulators and conducted by the Marijuana Policy Group, a collaboration between private consultants and the University of Colorado-Boulder Business Research Division has found that ‘dope tourism’ in the famous ski state is seeing much more business than initially thought.
The change in the law that came in at the start of the year allowed people in Colorado to buy marijuana from registered shops for personal se, but the study found that around 90% of legal drug sales in some Colorado ski towns are made to tourists not locals. This equates to “tens of millions of tourist dollars” spent in the Colorado ‘marijuana economy.’
On the ski slopes ski resorts have gone to great lengths to advise tourists that skiing under the influence (whether drugs or alcohol) is not accepted and that using dope on the federal Forest land that many of the centres have their slopes on remains illegal. Some have prevented marijuana shops from opening. However a number of travel services have been set up offering to take skiers from the airport to marijuana shops then to ski areas.
Colorado Marijuana Use in Numbers:
9% of Colorado residents are using marijuana at least once a month.
22% of users consume about 70% of the pot sold in Colorado.
121.4 metric tonnes of pot will be consumed in Colorado annually, 9 tonnes by tourists – 50 to 100% more than previous estimates.
$34.8 million in marijuana taxes collected by Colorado so far this year. Tourists from outside Colorado typically pay higher tax on their dope purchase than many Colorado residents who pay a smaller amount of tax as they purchase the drug ‘for medical reasons.’
