In 2012, when Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana, statehouse debates on the subject were mainly confined to enforcement, criminality, and addiction. How would the state avoid becoming a destination for drifters, addiction, and cannabis-related crime? And how would the budding industry look to conservative outsiders? Lobbying groups spent significant money on arguments for and against legalization, fueling endless disagreement. But absent from all of the mudslinging was a conversation about what would happen if THC in Colorado proved a rousing success—if the nation embraced the product as a health and recreation option and came to Colorado in droves.

Three years later, the initiative has, by most accounts, proven to be an economic boon. In 2014, Colorado marijuana sales totaled $700 million, and the state expects to collect $94 million annually in cannabis taxes by 2016. But economic analyses about weed’s success never mention skyrocketing housing prices in Denver, a city that’s rapidly becoming unaffordable for all but the wealthy.

At the end of June, as I board a full flight from Dallas to Denver, the flight attendant jokingly reminds us that smoking is not permitted in flight, even though we’re on our way to Colorado. The white, bearded bro to my left me chuckles knowingly, before telling me that he’s visiting the state to “have a good time with buddies.”

I’m moving back to my home state after some time living on the east coast, and I’m not quite prepared for what I’ll find when I arrive. Returning to Denver in 2015 after some time away is a bit like flying into a dystopian wasteland—but not the addict-ridden zombieland marijuana opponents imagined in 2012. Instead, enormous development projects rise out of the ground in all directions, wood and metal scraping against the eternally blue, big west sky. Denver smells green. Like weed—and money. Lots of money. And its residents are in trouble.

In the first six months of this year, recreational income from cannabis totaled over $253 million in Colorado. Denver, which has housed regulated marijuana operations since 2009, when Colorado codified its medical marijuana practices and nearby cities said no to cannabis business in their jurisdictions, now hosts around 4.5 million square feet of marijuana grow space in its industrially zoned areas.