{"id":115575,"date":"2014-12-29T20:51:20","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T03:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ski-towns-worry-over-marijuana-image\/"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:51:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T03:51:20","slug":"ski-towns-worry-over-marijuana-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ski-towns-worry-over-marijuana-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Ski towns worry over marijuana image"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Two
Two customers from Texas smell strains of marijuana inside the soon-to-move Breckenridge Cannabis Club. Some people in Colorado\u2019s ski towns are anxious that embracing marijuana too much will only reinforce the resorts\u2019 reputations, which to a degree already are tied to the stoner subculture.<\/span>Brennan Linsley\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

BRECKENRIDGE \u2013 Business is booming in Colorado\u2019s mountain resorts, and the addition of recreational marijuana stores this year has attracted customers curious about legalized pot. But there\u2019s mounting anxiety that ski towns have embraced stoner culture a little too much, potentially damaging the state\u2019s tourism brand.<\/p>\n

That worry flared up in two resort towns last week. In Breckenridge, residents voted overwhelmingly to force downtown\u2019s lone dispensary off Main Street to a less-visible location. And up the road in Granby, town officials used a property annex to prevent the first dispensary from opening there.<\/p>\n

The fear is that some families \u2013 a mainstay of the ski tourism industry \u2013 will stop vacationing here.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a morality issue, or that we think marijuana is bad,\u201d said Breckenridge councilor Gary Gallagher, who supported legal marijuana but also voted to force the Breckenridge Cannabis Club out of downtown. \u201cMarijuana, it is not in this country\u2019s DNA yet. It\u2019s a little bit too early.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, there\u2019s no indication that legal pot has damaged tourism, Colorado\u2019s No. 2 industry. The state notched a record $17.3 billion in tourism spending the year after legalization, with a record 64.6 million visitors, and state tourism officials say 2014 is poised to top last year\u2019s record.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s an open question whether pot has anything to do with it. Officials cite the improving economy and the weather, with healthy snow totals historically being the most significant driver for mountain visits.<\/p>\n

The state and its marijuana industry are barred by law from advertising weed out of state, and the head of the Colorado Tourism Office says the state isn\u2019t tracking the role of marijuana in tourist behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all anecdotal,\u201d Al White said. \u201cI have heard from some angry parents who said they\u2019ll never come back to Colorado because of marijuana. And I\u2019ve also heard from people who say they came to Colorado just to see the marijuana.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, it may be having a modest effect, but it\u2019s not huge either way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recent friction isn\u2019t the first time officials have moved to lower marijuana\u2019s profile.<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s largest ski operator, Vail Resorts, made headlines over the last year tearing down makeshift shelters built illicitly in hard-to-reach areas and used by stoners to \u201cget safe,\u201d mountain slang for toking up out of the cold and away from ski patrollers. Resorts across the state are dotted with the so-called smoke shacks, and some of them are decades old.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to communicate that consumption of marijuana is illegal in public and on federal land,\u201d Vail Resorts\u2019 Russ Pecoraro said in a statement about destroying the shacks in its four areas, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Vail.<\/p>\n

Still, at rates greater than their urban neighbors, mountain communities backed marijuana legalization in 2012, including Breckenridge, an early and enthusiastic support base, and there\u2019s no doubt that recreational pot has had an effect on ski towns.<\/p>\n

A state-produced report on the new marijuana industry issued in July concluded that 90 percent of recreational sales in mountain resort communities go to out-of-state visitors.<\/p>\n

The influx of shoppers \u2013 and camera crews that have become frequent sights as they work on pot-themed news stories and documentaries \u2013 has prompted a lively debate among residents about how pot is changing their resorts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you\u2019re pro-marijuana or against marijuana, you have to be concerned about how tourists react to seeing it,\u201d said Bob Gordman, a Breckenridge retiree who voted to move the dispensary.<\/p>\n

Others say the marijuana novelty will die down naturally and that resort towns shouldn\u2019t worry about dispensaries or the souvenir shops that put \u201cRocky Mountain High\u201d puns on T-shirts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn five or 10 years, it\u2019ll be no big issue,\u201d said Bill Kiser, a Breckenridge retiree who voted to keep the dispensary on Main Street.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t families get turned off when they go on vacation and see a bar and people drinking alcohol? Because they\u2019re used to it,\u201d Kiser said. \u201cPeople will eventually get used to this, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breckenridge councilor: Too early for acceptance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[135,1610,1187,421],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-115575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-marijuana","tag-recreational-marijuana","tag-tourism","tag-tourism-and-leisure"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115575"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=115575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}