Six months after the first retail marijuana stores opened in the state people in Colorado are using a lot of pot, according to a recent report.
The Colorado Department of Revenuereleased areportthis week that looks at the market size and demand for marijuana in the state.
It’s estimated that Colorado adults (21+) will use 121.4 metric tons of pot this year. Tourist demand is estimated at 8.9 metric tons of marijuana.
Add those numbers together and Colorado and out-of-state demand is 130.3 metric tons of pot. If you pressed that much weed into bricks it would build a wall eight feet tall and over 3,100 feet long.
"Yeah, that’s quite a bit," said Gregory Viditz-Ward, who owns Telluride Green Room, a retail and medical marijuana store. "I’d like to see that actually. Maybe we should all stack it."
Viditz-Ward said about 85 percent of his customers are from out-of-state.
"When people walk in the door they usually say I haven’t done this for years [and] now that it is legal I want to try it again," he said. "Mostly people come in and they buy very small amounts [like] a gram or a joint."
The report projected tourists represent 44 percent of metro retail sales and about 90 percent of retail sales in heavily visited mountain communities.
There are an estimated 485,000 Colorado adults, nine percent of the state's population, who use marijuana at least once per month, according to the report.
