The price of two grams of a strain of marijuana named “Sweet Lafayette,” is displayed at Top Shelf Cannabis, Tuesday, in Bellingham, Wash., on the first day of legal sales of recreational marijuana in the state.
Alison Holcomb, left, criminal justice director at the Washington state ACLU, holds her framed first-purchase of legal marijuana as she stands with Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes and state Sen. Jeanne Kohl- Welles at Cannabis City Tuesday, July 8, 2014, in Seattle, on the first day that sales of recreational pot became legal in the state.SEATTLE – Surrounded by thousands of packages of marijuana, Seattle’s top prosecutor sought some advice: Which one should he buy?
A new day, indeed.
Twenty months after voters legalized recreational cannabis for adults over 21, Washington state’s first few licensed pot shops opened for business Tuesday, catering to hundreds of customers who lined up outside, thrilled to be part of the historic moment.
The pot being sold at four stores in Seattle, Bellingham, Prosser and Spokane was regulated, tested for impurities, heavily taxed and in short supply – such short supply that several other shops couldn’t open because they had nothing to sell.
Pete Holmes, Seattle’s elected city attorney and a main backer of the state’s recreational marijuana law, said he wanted to be one of the first customers to demonstrate there are alternatives to the nation’s failed drug war.