Recreational pot sales: Where the grass is much greener

 

In a far corner of downtown Denver, the Andrews family runs an old-fashioned mom and pop (and daughter) shop, selling the biggest novelty of a new era: marijuana.

Their cozy store is fraught with risk. Although Colorado's landmark law makes it legal to sell marijuana to those 21 or older, the feds still classify it as illegal. The Obama administration says it won't prosecute buyers and sellers under the state's law, which went into effect January 1.

Nonetheless, banks won't service recreational pot stores out of fear of being prosecuted for money laundering. So, the Andrews' shop operates as an all-cash business.

For all the talk about how weed is recreational, the reality is it's financial. In fact, the expected boon is Colorado's "green rush" -- new taxes for government and untold millions to be made by growers and merchants. And if opening week is any indication, there's clearly gold in them thar buds.

Risky business

The Andrews thrive on derring-do. About 30 years ago, they bought a building in the once-forsaken Lower Downtown. Donald Andrews remembers how a newspaper cast it as folly then for paying the highest price-per-foot in "LoDo" (pronounced "low-dough").

But the gamble paid off big -- LoDo now shines as a historic district -- and this week, the Andrews were sensing good fortune again.

Their LoDo Wellness Center in the building's basement overflowed with customers this week, with a steady line of as many as 100 people waiting for hours.

Andrews, 62, calls himself the "Wal-Mart greeter" at the seven-employee store. Irrepressibly charismatic, he's the energetic jokester -- entertaining clientele, keeping them in line, assigning numbers, and urging them to keep the staircase clear.

"I never waited this long for herb either, and I used to go to the deal that never went down!" he shouts to customers, making a reference to a Cheech & Chong bit that many of the young adults in line don't get.

Linda Andrews, owner of the pot shop and wife of Donald, is working downstairs as the attendant to the shop's inner sanctum -- a dispensing room where jars of buds perfume the air with skunky pungency. It's enough to make your nose run. She allows no more than a handful of customers to enter at one time.

The Andrews' daughter Haley, 28, is a "budtender" -- the person at the end of the line who uses tongs to lift the buds from glass jars to plastic vials.

In the background, Linda Andrews' cell phone won't stop ringing, and she wonders if their inventory will last until closing. She and her husband, who've been together 40 years, twice cut the limit a customer could buy -- from a maximum of an ounce for Colorado residents to a quarter ounce and then finally an eighth of an ounce, all within the first 3½ hours. An eighth is enough to roll three or four standard joints. (Out-of-state buyers are limited to a quarter of an ounce.)

"This may be 10 times what I expected," Linda Andrews says on opening day. "It looks like it's going to be lucrative, but it looks like we're going to have to produce more."

Proverbs 16:27  An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire.

Jeremiah 7:9  Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;

Jeremiah 44:8  In that ye provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense unto other gods in the land of Egypt, whither ye be gone to dwell, that ye might cut yourselves off, and that ye might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?