Katelyn Baker
Well-Known Member
Whether you inhale or not, you will enter an alternate reality aboard the marijuana bus in Denver.
You buy your ticket inside the Cheba Hut (toasted subs) sandwich store downtown. You board one of the plain white buses and take a seat. Your tour guide greets you, makes sure you are used to smoking really good weed - no seeds or stems - and that you haven't had any alcohol in 24 hours. The questions are the retrorockets into alternate reality.
Excited mumbling and whispering ripple through the bus, getting louder as the motor revs and Mike Eymer, co-owner of Colorado Cannabis Tours, distributes cigar-size spliffs - joints that are a mix of marijuana and tobacco - to the three-dozen participants.
Lighters flick. Matches snap. Lungs expand as joint ends glow and crackle.
I'm talking to a woman beside me, who's about my age, from Boston. She says she was curious about the tour, legalized marijuana, etc. She starts looking at her phone, I turn my attention toward the back of the bus. I'm startled to find it has been swallowed up by smoke. A gray fog billows, this way and that, floor to ceiling.
I can hear their chatter of the tour goers - most from out of town, most 20- to 50-somethings, a lot of couples, a couple of girlfriends - but they remain sort of vague. People share a light, a match or a joint end. Music plays, "Low, ri-der, drives a little slower..."
I and the driver, I believe and hope, are the only ones not getting high. I get more and more self-conscious; I must be acting strange.
This is what happens when you do not inhale on a pot tour in Denver. You're strange.
Colorado Cannabis Tours began operating soon after marijuana was legalized for recreational use in Colorado. Its four-plus-hour bus excursions out of Denver include a glimpse of the hundreds of plants under cultivation at the River Rock Cannabis growing facility.
This is what also happens when you've grown up with the knowledge that pot is illegal, and subterfuge, obfuscation, denial and, of course, abstinence are the only ways you know to behave around it.
So for many - millions, let's say - visiting a place like Colorado, where marijuana has been legalized, provides a breath of fresh air, present atmosphere not included.
Marijuana tourism is a multibillion-dollar business in Colorado. Eymer is one of the ganja-preneurs; he was ready to fire up his business right after marijuana was legalized for recreational use in 2014. His Colorado Cannabis Tours partner, Heidi Keyes, had also found a niche working with weed - an artist, she began offering "Puff, Pass and Paint" workshops at her studio the same year. Those proved to be so popular that she soon had to move to a larger space.
Keyes and Eymer met and eventually joined forces. The ultimate goal, she said, wasn't just to make money but to have pot legalized nationally.
Today, CCT takes about 300 people out into the so-called cannabis community every weekend, Keyes estimates, and is planning to add weekday tours in the near future. And CCT is only one of several in this burgeoning field of weed tourism. You can find anything from full-blown marijuana-infused vacations, complete with pot-friendly lodging, cooking-with-buds classes, a helpful private driver, ski trips for smoke and vapers, and sightseeing in the countryside while in an altered mindset, etc.
I wasn't up for a multiday commitment but wanted to get more than a whiff of what was available for visitors from the diehard daily smoker to the merely curious. Colorado Cannabis's four-plus-hour tour - which included a so-called grow facility, a smoking-pipe glassblower and an extensive medical/recreational dispensaries - seemed to offer just the right overview of this growing industry.
And, as we billowed out of the bus along with the last of the smoke at our first stop, River Rock Cannabis, we understood that this is, indeed, an industry.
River Rock's one-story, boxlike building could have been a stationery-supplies headquarters - at least until we walked through the gate of the chain link fence, which sported a banner for the hashtag #RespectThePlant on one side and a notice on the other warning that no pot could be consumed on the premises.
Past the gate stood a small man with dark shades and a clipboard: We swapped our photo ID for a visitor's badge and paper hospital coverings for our shoes. Then off we shuffled toward the "grow."
Before getting a glimpse at the headline act - presumably a forest of in-most-other-states-illegal foliage - we received some background. Shuffling around in our paper booties in the tropically heated warehouse, a River Rocks guide showed off a seedling, giving each of us a chance to admire its very green, very nubile leaves.
This healthy specimen was not produced simply by letting nature take its course. No, these guys have been in business since 2009, and they have gotten the growing down to a science. Look, we're wearing hospital booties, for heaven's sake. The growers here don't want us dragging in any interlopers, especially errant pollen.
The marijuana sold in Denver's dispensaries isn't the stuff your college roommate brought home in a baggie, with enough stems to make it look like parakeet treat. Different plants harvested in different ways produce different end products with their own particular "head." At River Rock, I studied a Weed Wheel that explained the differences from sativa (gets you high) to indica (gets you stoned) to hybrids (well, a little of both), and factored in stuff like scent, taste and physical effects.
Most of the marijuana on shelves has been named by strain (Girl Scout Cookies or Kandy Kush or Blue Dream) and some of those are in high, so to speak, demand.
So it's somewhat like a Disney attraction or a Starbucks latte; you have a brand standard, and you need to control it.
This goes beyond corporate identity, however. At River Rock, the water used to irrigate the plants has been processed and backwashed to remove everything deleterious. The soil has been studied and supplemented with nutrients and vitamins and, OK, a few scoops of stuff I didn't quite understand.
The apotheosis of all this hard work awaited. Eymer opened a set of doors, and an amber glow poured forth. We peered in, quietly, to gaze at maybe 300 4- and 5-foot plants, each in its own tub on a concrete floor snaked with hoses. It was doubtful that anyone had seen that many actual pot plants in one place - outside of police video or a Cheech & Chong movie.
Back on the bus, spliffs were lighted anew, a bong was passed around and a 3-foot-long glass carburetor was demonstrated by our guide. The couple next to me - newlyweds from Oregon who were spending four days of their two-week honeymoon there - looked on at the tube full of smoke in awe. I figured one inhale would put me in a hospital. We all watched Chase, his youth belying an obvious mastery of the toke, who handled a full tube's worth of smoke no problem.
The carburetor and bong had appeared because our next stop was Glass Craft, a place that made smoking materials of any sort and also held classes. There we met Chris Schutz, who was leading a Saturday class of neophyte glass workers in the fine art of pipe making. He was delighted to demonstrate the process for us, from scratch. As he heated up the bolus of glass and blew, then pinched off and reheated it, he rolled off jokes we'd been warned about (not really that bad) and mused over his good fortune - getting to do something he loved, getting to be high while doing it, and getting paid, too.
Heading off to our last stop, the bus was noticeably ... quieter. The newlyweds were curled together like kittens, eyes closed. Two girlfriends who'd wanted me to come with them to see Widespread Panic at Red Rocks Amphitheater that night (they'd already been to one show) looked like they'd need a whole lot of caffeine to make it. Even Chase had stopped his near-incessant fuming.
Our last stop was at Medicine Man dispensary, and yes, this was heavy on advice about marijuana-derived products to cure what ailed you.
A large man with a kind face fringed in grizzled beard stood almost filling the window of a consultation booth. He looked like a pharmacist, with hippie beads instead of the white coat. So I asked: what could marijuana do for my asthma?
I mean, smoking the stuff had to be hard on lungs.
He immediately explained that there were extracts - oils and other distillates that I could put into a vaporizer, like the Vicks of my toddlerhood. These products were not illegal - they could even be sent through the mail. The variety of derivatives and the ways you can use/ingest them - both medical and recreational - has proliferated wildly. There are cannabis flower, hashish, shatter, wax, oils, edibles. You can smoke it, vape it, chew it, drink it or slap it in a patch on your arm. I wasn't about to make the investment right then, but I had made this trip to Denver in the first place for tests at National Jewish Health, the leading asthma hospital in the country. I figured if the docs there came up empty, there was always Medicine Man. I took a card.
The last of the group eventually boarded the buses, some with purchases (an average joint goes for $8). It was about 20 minutes back to town, where we were dropped off rather unceremoniously back at Cheba Hut. My eyes were burning a little, and my throat felt like I'd been inhaling. Other than that, I had made a smooth reentry from that alternate universe. Proof? I knew exactly where I'd parked my car.
My tour companions? Not sure, but I do know that Uber is especially popular in Denver.
The laws
Note that all laws below apply to retail, or recreational, marijuana. To buy medical marijuana in Denver or Colorado in general you need a state red card, which can only be obtained by Colorado residents from a state-licensed doctor.
Since the legalization of marijuana in 2014, tourism has been on the increase in Colorado, and marijuana-related services and amenities have proliferated. But as Heidi Keyes, an owner of Colorado Cannabis Tours, notes, ganja-preneurs can't succeed simply because they know marijuana — they have to know how to run a business, too. Since legalization, she says, some businesses quickly went by the wayside. Here are a few of the options and services available for visitors who want a hit of marijuana-infused hospitality. A caveat: While you can pay for many services with a credit card, you'll still need to pay for products at dispensaries with cash, as banks and credit card companies aren't entirely on board with the legalized marijuana phenomenon/industry.
TRANSPORTATION: 420 Airport Pickup (420friendlyairportpickup.com) gets you a ride from Denver International to your accommodations in a private shuttle, stopping at a retail marijuana store along the way: $75 to downtown Denver for up to four people, 10 percent off purchases at the store, plus vaporizer rentals for $20 a day. The company also runs Ski Buds, providing similar services to the ski resorts: 420friendlyskiresorttransportation.com
DAY TOURS: Many private-car services will customize a marijuana-centric itinerary for you and your group. Among them are Mile High Limo Tours, which also offers airport transfers (milehighlimotours.com). My 420 Tours (my420tours.com), like Colorado Cannabis Tours, offers scheduled departures for various types of tours every week, along with special experiences (including Sushi, Sake, & Joint Rolling Class, $69, every Thursday and Friday).
City Sessions (citysessionsdenver.com) offers private customized tours for individuals and groups on a variety of themes, including a Cannasseur Tour of the Senses; Foodie Tour; Concentrate Tour; Medical Relief Tour; New to Cannabis Tour and Industry Insider Tour. They also help you find marijuana-friendly accommodations.
SPEAKING OF ACCOMMODATIONS: Some hotels put aside rooms for those who want to smoke, vape or ingest in comfort and privacy. But most of these establishments prefer not to widely advertise their 420-friendliness. You can, however, tap into the cannabis community for recommendations and help booking. While a tour company like City Sessions offers a guide for $10 with resources and accommodations, you can also go to free sites like coloradopotguide.com, a comprehensive resource for visitors on everything from laws to lounges. They also have a map of dispensaries in the area.
AND BEYOND: OTHER CITIES, VACATIONS: Cultivating Spirits (cultivatingspirits.com) offers tours that combine food, wine and cannabis high in the Rocky Mountains. They also offer three-course cannabis pairing dinners.
Among the companies specializing in cannabis vacations is Travel High Colorado (travelhigh.co), whose "highcation specialists" will customize a vacation in the mountains, Denver, or a combination of destinations; also, Two Girls Tours (2girlstours.com), offering three-day packages including airport transfers, two nights in 420-friendly accommodations with a dispensary stop on the way, a Friday private cannabis cooking class, a Saturday Party Bus Tour around Denver, and Two Girls swag bag.
MORE OFFICIAL INFO: Denver tourism site: denver.org.
City of Denver's official information site for details and FAQ's about recreational marijuana in the city: MarijuanaInfoDenver.org.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Marijuana Tourism Is Big Business In Colorado
Author: Jill Schensul
Photo Credit: Jill Schensul
Website: North Jersey
You buy your ticket inside the Cheba Hut (toasted subs) sandwich store downtown. You board one of the plain white buses and take a seat. Your tour guide greets you, makes sure you are used to smoking really good weed - no seeds or stems - and that you haven't had any alcohol in 24 hours. The questions are the retrorockets into alternate reality.
Excited mumbling and whispering ripple through the bus, getting louder as the motor revs and Mike Eymer, co-owner of Colorado Cannabis Tours, distributes cigar-size spliffs - joints that are a mix of marijuana and tobacco - to the three-dozen participants.
Lighters flick. Matches snap. Lungs expand as joint ends glow and crackle.
I'm talking to a woman beside me, who's about my age, from Boston. She says she was curious about the tour, legalized marijuana, etc. She starts looking at her phone, I turn my attention toward the back of the bus. I'm startled to find it has been swallowed up by smoke. A gray fog billows, this way and that, floor to ceiling.
I can hear their chatter of the tour goers - most from out of town, most 20- to 50-somethings, a lot of couples, a couple of girlfriends - but they remain sort of vague. People share a light, a match or a joint end. Music plays, "Low, ri-der, drives a little slower..."
I and the driver, I believe and hope, are the only ones not getting high. I get more and more self-conscious; I must be acting strange.
This is what happens when you do not inhale on a pot tour in Denver. You're strange.
Colorado Cannabis Tours began operating soon after marijuana was legalized for recreational use in Colorado. Its four-plus-hour bus excursions out of Denver include a glimpse of the hundreds of plants under cultivation at the River Rock Cannabis growing facility.
This is what also happens when you've grown up with the knowledge that pot is illegal, and subterfuge, obfuscation, denial and, of course, abstinence are the only ways you know to behave around it.
So for many - millions, let's say - visiting a place like Colorado, where marijuana has been legalized, provides a breath of fresh air, present atmosphere not included.
Marijuana tourism is a multibillion-dollar business in Colorado. Eymer is one of the ganja-preneurs; he was ready to fire up his business right after marijuana was legalized for recreational use in 2014. His Colorado Cannabis Tours partner, Heidi Keyes, had also found a niche working with weed - an artist, she began offering "Puff, Pass and Paint" workshops at her studio the same year. Those proved to be so popular that she soon had to move to a larger space.
Keyes and Eymer met and eventually joined forces. The ultimate goal, she said, wasn't just to make money but to have pot legalized nationally.
Today, CCT takes about 300 people out into the so-called cannabis community every weekend, Keyes estimates, and is planning to add weekday tours in the near future. And CCT is only one of several in this burgeoning field of weed tourism. You can find anything from full-blown marijuana-infused vacations, complete with pot-friendly lodging, cooking-with-buds classes, a helpful private driver, ski trips for smoke and vapers, and sightseeing in the countryside while in an altered mindset, etc.
I wasn't up for a multiday commitment but wanted to get more than a whiff of what was available for visitors from the diehard daily smoker to the merely curious. Colorado Cannabis's four-plus-hour tour - which included a so-called grow facility, a smoking-pipe glassblower and an extensive medical/recreational dispensaries - seemed to offer just the right overview of this growing industry.
And, as we billowed out of the bus along with the last of the smoke at our first stop, River Rock Cannabis, we understood that this is, indeed, an industry.
River Rock's one-story, boxlike building could have been a stationery-supplies headquarters - at least until we walked through the gate of the chain link fence, which sported a banner for the hashtag #RespectThePlant on one side and a notice on the other warning that no pot could be consumed on the premises.
Past the gate stood a small man with dark shades and a clipboard: We swapped our photo ID for a visitor's badge and paper hospital coverings for our shoes. Then off we shuffled toward the "grow."
Before getting a glimpse at the headline act - presumably a forest of in-most-other-states-illegal foliage - we received some background. Shuffling around in our paper booties in the tropically heated warehouse, a River Rocks guide showed off a seedling, giving each of us a chance to admire its very green, very nubile leaves.
This healthy specimen was not produced simply by letting nature take its course. No, these guys have been in business since 2009, and they have gotten the growing down to a science. Look, we're wearing hospital booties, for heaven's sake. The growers here don't want us dragging in any interlopers, especially errant pollen.
The marijuana sold in Denver's dispensaries isn't the stuff your college roommate brought home in a baggie, with enough stems to make it look like parakeet treat. Different plants harvested in different ways produce different end products with their own particular "head." At River Rock, I studied a Weed Wheel that explained the differences from sativa (gets you high) to indica (gets you stoned) to hybrids (well, a little of both), and factored in stuff like scent, taste and physical effects.
Most of the marijuana on shelves has been named by strain (Girl Scout Cookies or Kandy Kush or Blue Dream) and some of those are in high, so to speak, demand.
So it's somewhat like a Disney attraction or a Starbucks latte; you have a brand standard, and you need to control it.
This goes beyond corporate identity, however. At River Rock, the water used to irrigate the plants has been processed and backwashed to remove everything deleterious. The soil has been studied and supplemented with nutrients and vitamins and, OK, a few scoops of stuff I didn't quite understand.
The apotheosis of all this hard work awaited. Eymer opened a set of doors, and an amber glow poured forth. We peered in, quietly, to gaze at maybe 300 4- and 5-foot plants, each in its own tub on a concrete floor snaked with hoses. It was doubtful that anyone had seen that many actual pot plants in one place - outside of police video or a Cheech & Chong movie.
Back on the bus, spliffs were lighted anew, a bong was passed around and a 3-foot-long glass carburetor was demonstrated by our guide. The couple next to me - newlyweds from Oregon who were spending four days of their two-week honeymoon there - looked on at the tube full of smoke in awe. I figured one inhale would put me in a hospital. We all watched Chase, his youth belying an obvious mastery of the toke, who handled a full tube's worth of smoke no problem.
The carburetor and bong had appeared because our next stop was Glass Craft, a place that made smoking materials of any sort and also held classes. There we met Chris Schutz, who was leading a Saturday class of neophyte glass workers in the fine art of pipe making. He was delighted to demonstrate the process for us, from scratch. As he heated up the bolus of glass and blew, then pinched off and reheated it, he rolled off jokes we'd been warned about (not really that bad) and mused over his good fortune - getting to do something he loved, getting to be high while doing it, and getting paid, too.
Heading off to our last stop, the bus was noticeably ... quieter. The newlyweds were curled together like kittens, eyes closed. Two girlfriends who'd wanted me to come with them to see Widespread Panic at Red Rocks Amphitheater that night (they'd already been to one show) looked like they'd need a whole lot of caffeine to make it. Even Chase had stopped his near-incessant fuming.
Our last stop was at Medicine Man dispensary, and yes, this was heavy on advice about marijuana-derived products to cure what ailed you.
A large man with a kind face fringed in grizzled beard stood almost filling the window of a consultation booth. He looked like a pharmacist, with hippie beads instead of the white coat. So I asked: what could marijuana do for my asthma?
I mean, smoking the stuff had to be hard on lungs.
He immediately explained that there were extracts - oils and other distillates that I could put into a vaporizer, like the Vicks of my toddlerhood. These products were not illegal - they could even be sent through the mail. The variety of derivatives and the ways you can use/ingest them - both medical and recreational - has proliferated wildly. There are cannabis flower, hashish, shatter, wax, oils, edibles. You can smoke it, vape it, chew it, drink it or slap it in a patch on your arm. I wasn't about to make the investment right then, but I had made this trip to Denver in the first place for tests at National Jewish Health, the leading asthma hospital in the country. I figured if the docs there came up empty, there was always Medicine Man. I took a card.
The last of the group eventually boarded the buses, some with purchases (an average joint goes for $8). It was about 20 minutes back to town, where we were dropped off rather unceremoniously back at Cheba Hut. My eyes were burning a little, and my throat felt like I'd been inhaling. Other than that, I had made a smooth reentry from that alternate universe. Proof? I knew exactly where I'd parked my car.
My tour companions? Not sure, but I do know that Uber is especially popular in Denver.
The laws
Note that all laws below apply to retail, or recreational, marijuana. To buy medical marijuana in Denver or Colorado in general you need a state red card, which can only be obtained by Colorado residents from a state-licensed doctor.
- You must be at least 21 to buy or use retail marijuana.
- You can buy up to an ounce of marijuana at a time.
- You can buy retail marijuana at licensed dispensaries in Denver and other municipalities in Colorado but note that each city has its own sale and consumption laws. For instance, the state allows marijuana stores to operate from 8 a.m. to midnight, but cities have implemented additional restrictions; in Denver, for instance, stores must close by 7 p.m.; in neighboring Aurora, they can stay open till 10.
- Marijuana may not be consumed openly or publicly. You can only light up or otherwise use it in locations not open or accessible to the public. So you can't use it in places like transportation facilities, schools, amusement/sporting/music venues, parks, playgrounds, walking down sidewalks or roads, outdoor or rooftop cafés. It is also illegal to smoke at indoor-but-public locations like bars, restaurants and common areas in buildings. It is illegal to consume marijuana in or around a licensed store.
- Rules for possession and consumption are the same for both edible and smoked marijuana,
- You can have marijuana in your car, but it must be in a closed container. You can't consume it in a vehicle, and it's illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana. If you have 5 or more nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, you're over the limit, and fines are similar to those involving DUI for alcohol.
- While you can't consumer marijuana on public transportation, you can smoke in a limousine or other private for-hire vehicle if the operator allows it. In the back seat only.
- You can also consume marijuana in smoke-friendly hotels. The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act limits all smoking to a maximum of 25 percent of rooms in any hotel; Denver city laws prohibit marijuana consumption on hotel balconies if visible from any public place.
- If the owner of a private house or property allows it, you can smoke outside — but not within public view.
- Colorado's legalization of marijuana does not apply to federal lands - national parks, national forests or monuments, or other federal properties like courthouses. Also, be aware that many ski areas are on federal land (mainly the ski runs, not the towns or base of the mountain), so be aware of your location and what laws apply.
Since the legalization of marijuana in 2014, tourism has been on the increase in Colorado, and marijuana-related services and amenities have proliferated. But as Heidi Keyes, an owner of Colorado Cannabis Tours, notes, ganja-preneurs can't succeed simply because they know marijuana — they have to know how to run a business, too. Since legalization, she says, some businesses quickly went by the wayside. Here are a few of the options and services available for visitors who want a hit of marijuana-infused hospitality. A caveat: While you can pay for many services with a credit card, you'll still need to pay for products at dispensaries with cash, as banks and credit card companies aren't entirely on board with the legalized marijuana phenomenon/industry.
TRANSPORTATION: 420 Airport Pickup (420friendlyairportpickup.com) gets you a ride from Denver International to your accommodations in a private shuttle, stopping at a retail marijuana store along the way: $75 to downtown Denver for up to four people, 10 percent off purchases at the store, plus vaporizer rentals for $20 a day. The company also runs Ski Buds, providing similar services to the ski resorts: 420friendlyskiresorttransportation.com
DAY TOURS: Many private-car services will customize a marijuana-centric itinerary for you and your group. Among them are Mile High Limo Tours, which also offers airport transfers (milehighlimotours.com). My 420 Tours (my420tours.com), like Colorado Cannabis Tours, offers scheduled departures for various types of tours every week, along with special experiences (including Sushi, Sake, & Joint Rolling Class, $69, every Thursday and Friday).
City Sessions (citysessionsdenver.com) offers private customized tours for individuals and groups on a variety of themes, including a Cannasseur Tour of the Senses; Foodie Tour; Concentrate Tour; Medical Relief Tour; New to Cannabis Tour and Industry Insider Tour. They also help you find marijuana-friendly accommodations.
SPEAKING OF ACCOMMODATIONS: Some hotels put aside rooms for those who want to smoke, vape or ingest in comfort and privacy. But most of these establishments prefer not to widely advertise their 420-friendliness. You can, however, tap into the cannabis community for recommendations and help booking. While a tour company like City Sessions offers a guide for $10 with resources and accommodations, you can also go to free sites like coloradopotguide.com, a comprehensive resource for visitors on everything from laws to lounges. They also have a map of dispensaries in the area.
AND BEYOND: OTHER CITIES, VACATIONS: Cultivating Spirits (cultivatingspirits.com) offers tours that combine food, wine and cannabis high in the Rocky Mountains. They also offer three-course cannabis pairing dinners.
Among the companies specializing in cannabis vacations is Travel High Colorado (travelhigh.co), whose "highcation specialists" will customize a vacation in the mountains, Denver, or a combination of destinations; also, Two Girls Tours (2girlstours.com), offering three-day packages including airport transfers, two nights in 420-friendly accommodations with a dispensary stop on the way, a Friday private cannabis cooking class, a Saturday Party Bus Tour around Denver, and Two Girls swag bag.
MORE OFFICIAL INFO: Denver tourism site: denver.org.
City of Denver's official information site for details and FAQ's about recreational marijuana in the city: MarijuanaInfoDenver.org.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Marijuana Tourism Is Big Business In Colorado
Author: Jill Schensul
Photo Credit: Jill Schensul
Website: North Jersey
