Colorado will become the first state in the U.S. to allow recreational marijuana sales beginning January 1, 2014, but the pot industry is yet to face an uncertain future, according to MSN News.
Retailers are investing plenty of their resources into legal recreational marijuana as Colorado prepares for the opening January 1 sales.
Andy Williams, a 45-year-old ex-industrial engineer and an investor in Denver is imagining an Apple Store-like marijuana dispensary.
"It's going to be all white and beautiful," he told MSN News. Williams, just like investors in the budding marijuana market, is excited about the myriad possibilities in store for him. He owns an empty warehouse, which he said will house 40,000 square feet of cannabis strains.
According to Williams, he plans to have two floors of pot-growing rooms. He said it will have windows to show prospective shoppers how the marijuana plant is grown, dried, trimmed and how the valuable flowers are separated from its stems and leaves.
"We are building an impressive showcase for the world, to show them this is an industry," Williams told MSN News, while the scent of marijuana competes with the smell of sawdust and wet paint in his store. He hopes to sell marijuana just like a bottle of wine.
For centuries, cannabis can be grown legally in the U.S. until it was prohibited at the end of the 1930s when the federal government decided to make it illegal. The plight of pot production was exacerbated by "Reefer Madness," a 1936 propaganda film that warned the American public about the ill effects of pot. The propaganda argued that marijuana can turn people into mindless criminals.
Pot activists lobbied against the ban and were able to chip away parts of the prohibition. The first victory of pot advocates came in 1996 when the state of California allowed medical marijuana. Today, there are 19 states that allow the use of medical marijuana, which include Colorado and Washington, and the District of Columbia.
However, businessmen like Williams recall their fearful plight years ago with thoughts of what might happen next.
"It was scary," said Williams, who borrowed some $630,000 from his parents and relatives to so he can setup Medicine Man in 2009. "I literally had dreams multiple times a week where I was in prison and couldn't see my wife or my child. Lot of sleepless nights."
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