NJ marijuana legalization: Colorado tourism exploded with legal weed. Is NJ tourism next?

This story is part of the HIGH HOPES series from the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey, which sent journalists to Colorado & California to see how legal weed could impact the Garden State

ADAMS COUNTY, Colorado - The pungent marijuana smoke wafted across the parking lot of beat-up cars and into the street, silently assaulting the senses of passersby.

If it wasn't for the smoke blooming from every corner inside iBake Denver — you could barely breathe without inhaling at least a whiff — a visitor might mistake the small, crowded lounge for the waiting room of the body shop next door instead of one of the oldest marijuana members' clubs in the Denver area.

In the middle of one cloud sat Samuel A. Torres, his eyes a bit glazed and wearing a T-shirt that said "nug life," with an image of a pot leaf. He's not a tourist, though he started out this way. Since moving from Middletown, New Jersey, to attend college a few years ago, he's become an iBake regular.

“You don’t see bad things happen in a place like this. We never have fights. Nobody has to call the cops," said Torres, 29. "It's very laid back. You have nothing to fear."

A USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey reporter had a particularly interesting experience at iBake Denver, which you can hear him discuss in the video below.

Leaders of the cannabis industry have long dreamed of making New Jersey the East Coast version of Colorado. Already a tourist attraction for hiking and skiing in the Rocky Mountains, legal weed has turned Colorado into a go-to destination for marijuana users, like those at iBake Denver, a two-room private lounge where members can get high so long as they pay the $12 monthly fee and $3 for each visit.

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A tourist from New Jersey can walk in, pay $15, sign paperwork and legally smoke weed.

Out-of-state visitors are a key component of the marijuana industry. In 2014, they were responsible for 44 percent of retail marijuana sales — and 90 percent of sales in heavily trafficked mountain communities, according to the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division, whose 104 employees track and regulate marijuana sales in the state.

And according to the Colorado Tourism Office, more than 12 million visitors — 15 percent of all visitors — participated in a “marijuana-related activity” in 2016, double the 8 percent of people who said they planned to ski or snowboard.

About 5 percent of visitors said marijuana was a “motivation” for their trip, according to the Colorado Tourism Office, though that number has dipped. Every new state with legal weed provides tourists with another vacation destination, said University of Denver professor Paul Seaborn, who teaches the Business of Marijuana course.

"We've probably passed our peak," Seaborn said.

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But unlike Colorado, New Jersey has 130 miles of beaches and an estimated 101 million visitors last year, many of whom can take a day trip to the Jersey Shore to lay on the beach, stroll the boardwalk, eat a zeppole — or get high without fear of the police if marijuana is legalized in the Garden State.

"The dispensaries in downtown Denver or in our mountain resorts — Aspen and Vail — are naturally set up for tourists," Seaborn said. "It's location, location, location."

Hop on the magic weed bus

Mandy Ashby was raring to go. She'd traveled from Henderson, Kentucky, to Denver. She'd bought her legal weed. She'd paid Colorado Cannabis Tours the $99 required to hop on their bus.

And now Ashby wanted to get high: “Who wants to do bong rips?" she asked, offering the comically large glass bong to anyone else who wanted to partake.

She was one of 22 people on a recent trip by Colorado Cannabis Tours. The crowd was diverse — black, white and Latino men and women, from 21 years old to passengers in their sixties.

The company's name is a bit of a misnomer. It's not so much a tour as it is a four-hour party on wheels.

The Colorado Cannabis Tour brings guests to a few different marijuana dispensaries, a growing facility and a glass-blowing workshop. But the bulk of the trip takes place on a chartered party bus, which quickly became a “hotbox” with the entire cabin becoming one big smoking circle.

The bus driver's cabin was walled off from the hotbox, with its own air source and filtration. Colorado state law only allows marijuana smoking in separate, rear passenger areas of limousines and party buses.

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The guests and staff members openly smoke legal weed on the bus, passing around joints and "tasting" different strains as if they're coffee flavors, bopping their head to upbeat club music and strobe lights. Tour guide Alayna Adair — she’s christened herself “Laynie Ganja” — provided insight on each stop and each strain and assisted the few novices on the bus with the ins and outs of smoking legal weed.

“It is a niche industry but it's one that is breaking out and causing a lot of attention,” said Colorado Cannabis Tours founder Michael Eymer. “The companies that are involved in this drive, not just into our own revenue streams but throughout the city, millions of dollars’ worth of business per year.”

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The concept of marijuana tours — Colorado Cannabis Tours is just one of a number of bus-based marijuana lounges in the Denver area — is part of what Seaborn calls the “second phase” of marijuana tourism, which a USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey journalist discusses in the video below.

The first phase was novelty: In 2014, Colorado became the first state to sell legal weed for adult use. That’s all that was necessary to get people to visit.

Next up are the "private experiences," he said — the tours, the cannabis classes, yoga. Visitors can smoke weed on those trips because they're closed off to the public.

But Colorado Cannabis Tours has gone beyond the party on wheels. Eymer has expanded the operation into a cannabis-focused travel agency, one of many outlets in Colorado that negotiate rooms with marijuana-friendly hotels.

Some hotels have specific rooms where guests are allowed to use marijuana vaporizers. Others allow discrete smoking on balconies or in outdoor gardens.

And then there are the bed-and-breakfast options, where guests can smoke anywhere on the property, and an Airbnb-style network of short-term rentals where guests are allowed to smoke weed.

Those amenities have helped set Colorado apart from other states with legal weed, Eymer said.

“People are super thrilled with everything that we’re doing for them. But the reviews don’t read, ‘Oh the weed was so good. It was dank. I got blasted out of my mind,'" Eymer said. The company has an average five-star rating across a few dozen reviews on the travel site Yelp.

"It’s that expression of freedom that they're getting to indulge in. That's really what's getting them. ... Here within our classes, within our services, not only is there no judgment, but there's no worry of law enforcement.

“That's the beautiful thing about what they experience," he said.

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‘It's not Mom & Pop's basement'

The party bus of Colorado Cannabis Tours is a solution to one simple, crucial issue for visitors: Where can you smoke legal weed?

Colorado residents are only allowed to smoke marijuana at home, and visitors don't even have that option.

Consuming marijuana — of any kind — is illegal in a motor vehicle or in public, which has led to a boon in more discrete ways to use marijuana, such as edibles and vaporizers.

Four years after marijuana became legal in Colorado, the city of Denver had its first answer: The Coffee Joint.

Barely a month old, the Coffee Joint is Denver’s first licensed “social consumption lounge,” a place where marijuana users can get high, nestled just off Interstate 25 in the industrial Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Business owners Rita Tsalyuk and Kirill Merkulov see it as a way to stand out: There are nearly 300 dispensaries in Denver, but only one social consumption lounge — and it’s next door to 1136 Yuma, their dispensary.

“They actually have a place to come in, where they don’t have to be shy or hide from anybody,” Merkulov said. “And it’s not your mom and pop’s basement.”

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And they come from everywhere: Visitors are asked to record their point of origin with a pin on a map of the United States, hanging on a wall in a back room. The pins were stuck mostly in Colorado, though a handful were scattered throughout the country — including a few in New Jersey.

At the Coffee Joint, users can consume marijuana edibles, vape or dab — inhaling a quick burst of high-potent marijuana concentrate — but they aren’t allowed to smoke marijuana inside. That restriction is due solely to the fact that there’s no outdoor space — if the Coffee Joint had a backyard, it’d be allowed there.

It’s BYOW — bring your own weed — and customers from 1136 Yuma can enter for free (there’s a $5 fee for everyone else).

The business was still in its soft opening when USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey visited, but there was still a steady stream of customers. At one point, a few board members from the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association stopped in, making small talk with Tsalyuk while one customer read a book, inhaling a vaporizer.

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At the dispensary next door, a group of people mistakenly walked in, thinking it was the Coffee Joint. When they learned of the $5 cover, they decided to buy marijuana from the dispensary so they could get in for free.

“What we’re striving for, and I think it works, is that you come in here and don’t see a lower-class establishment,” Tsalyuk said. “They come in here, look around and behave in the way this establishment expects them to behave.”

Including permissions for social consumption lounges in a marijuana legalization law, like the Coffee Joint, is the easiest way for a state to make its mark in pot tourism, Seaborn said.

“Maybe New Jersey can crack that aspect,” Seaborn said. “It’s going to be huge and will keep these tourists coming around for the long run.”

Social consumption lounges may be the next big thing, but they're not new. They're just becoming legal.

Some Colorado legislators have spent years trying to get a bill passed that would issue cannabis clubs licenses, but it's failed every time, most recently in April.

But they have had progress in similar areas. Recently, the Colorado state Legislature approved a bill that would legalize marijuana "tasting rooms" at dispensaries, where customers could consume edibles or vape on premises. It's awaiting the signature of Gov. John Hickenlooper.

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For years, Colorado has been home to private “member lounges,” such as iBake Denver, which endures in spite of a state law that seems to bar such establishments.

The Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division’s website states that marijuana social clubs aren’t permitted. And iBake has been at odds with Adams County officials, who have tried unsuccessfully to shut down the location.

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But iBake technically isn’t open to the public. It is a private club with dues-paying members, who pay solely to smoke their own legal weed. iBake doesn't have a dispensary license, so it doesn't provide the drugs.

“We have a lot of kids at home, so we can’t smoke there,” said 43-year-old Jeremy Sheets. “Not only does it give us a safe place to partake, but it gives us a chance to meet like-minded people.

“I’ve had close friends up and move out of the state because they don’t want to be seen as a bunch of potheads from Colorado,” said Sheets, an HVAC contractor and aspiring artist, who spent an hour at iBake drawing in a sketch pad, his passion. "This gives you a chance to meet people who are OK with it."

HIGH HOPES: Network journalists talk Colorado, California legal weed experiences

Mike Davis; @byMikeDavis: 732-643-4223; mdavis@gannettnj.com