US

Is legal pot is luring spring breakers to Denver?

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Greg Campbell Contributor
Font Size:

It may come as little surprise, but Denver is a top spring break destination this year, an honor that probably has less to do with Colorado’s epic ski conditions than the ready availability of recreational marijuana.

An analysis by Priceline.com shows the Mile High City is the third most popular place to get away, based on bookings in March. Only Las Vegas and New Orleans are more popular.

But Rich Grant, spokesman for Denver’s visitor and convention bureau, says it’s impossible to know how many out of towners are making a pot pilgrimage.

“It’s not set up to be measured,” he said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s no [marijuana] tourism infrastructure in Colorado. The basic fact is you can buy it here legally, but it’s very hard for visitors to use it without breaking the law.”

That’s because most hotels are nonsmoking and it’s still illegal to smoke weed in public. Not that either has proved a big barrier to the more determined marijuana enthusiast. Grant said he heard of a visitor asking about the fine for smoking in a hotel room as he was checking in. When told that it was $250, the visitor promptly paid the fine in advance.

Anecdotally, dispensary owners still report that as many as half of the IDs they check are from out of state, a percentage that has remained fairly consistent since Colorado began selling legal pot on Jan. 1.

And regardless of whether marijuana purchases are in addition to other spring break activities, like skiing or camping, there’s little question that many are spending more than they otherwise might.

“We would never have stopped in Denver,” Doug Drumm of Syracuse, N.Y., told Denver’s Fox 31, while shopping for pot. “We wouldn’t have stopped here to eat, we wouldn’t have stopped here for anything. But this place is here … [and] now we’ll eat dinner here. It’s got to be good for the economy.”

A busy spring break might be a precursor to what April might hold. That’s when the annual 4/20 celebration will be held in Denver, in conjunction with High Times magazine’s Cannabis Cup competition.

And although Grant says “we’ll probably never really be able to tell” how much legal pot is attracting out-of-towners, he said one clue will be Denver’s hotel vacancy rate on 4/20. That happens to be Easter Sunday this year, which is historically a slow weekend for visitors.

“If downtown is sold out on Easter Sunday,” he said, “you would have to say something was going on.”

Follow Greg on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel