Courtesy of Mish.
Colorado ushers in the new year a the first US state to allow retail cannabis sales.
Marijuana users celebrated as Colorado became the first US state to allow retail cannabis sales, putting it in the vanguard of efforts across the country to legalize the drug.
The western state famous for its ski resorts and breathtaking mountain vistas has issued 348 retail licenses — including for small pot shops — that can sell up to 28 grams of pot to people aged 21 or older, starting Wednesday.
Washington state on the Pacific Coast will follow Colorado several months from now, when it also allows stores to begin selling cannabis.
Iraq war veteran Sean Azzariti was the first person to legally purchase cannabis for recreational use in the United States.
State officials here anticipate that marijuana sales will generate some $67 million in annual tax revenue.
Colorado and Washington are creating a recreational market in which local authorities will oversee growing, distribution and marketing — all of it legal — for people to get high just for the fun of it.
The market is huge: from $1.4 billion in medical marijuana in 2013, it will grow by 64 percent to $2.34 billion in 2014 with recreational pot added in Colorado and Washington, according to ArcView Market Research, which tracks and publishes data on the cannabis industry.
Washington state is expected to open more than 300 pot shops in June.
Record Opium Crop in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, despite US presence for 13 years, Record opium output boosts Afghan warlords’ power base.
Afghanistan, long the world’s main heroin supplier, has seen its total area of poppy seed plantations explode to 516,000 acres – a 36 percent increase from 2012, according to the report, released on Wednesday.
Last year, the war-torn Central Asian country accounted for 75 percent of the world’s opium supplies; Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, has said in the past that supplies may reach 90 percent of the global total this year.
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