Marijuana in America: Colorado Pot Rush - CNBC

In 2014 One year after recreational pot sales were made legal, CNBC takes you back to Colorado to examine the growing profits and potential perils of this $600 million industry.

Colorado made history as the first state in the U.S. to legalize marijuana for recreational use. NBC News correspondent Harry Smith tells the story behind this stunning development, which has been called one of the great social experiments of the next century.

There seems to be endless fascination with the legalization of marijuana.

It’s not just that something that was once taboo can now be purchased at a corner store, but also the myriad steps and complications that buyers and sellers have gone through along the way. On a deeper level, it taps into our national entrepreneurial spirit – people are making a lot of money with this, and so are the governments that tax them. It truly is the next gold rush.

A few years ago Big Pictures crews worked on a documentary called Marijuana USA for CNBC. We explored the early stages of legalization, back when users needed medical reasons to purchase pot. We filmed patients limping in and out of clinics trying to get their cards, and specialty gardeners tending their crops in strangely lit grow rooms.

Mom and pop shops were thriving on selling bags of weed and edibles – blending cannabis syrup with brownie mix, candy ingredients, and even pasta sauce.

This was truly the early frontier – with buyers, sellers, and law enforcement all trying to figure out the new rules of the game.

Last year we shot an episode of Drugs, Inc. for National Geographic. This delved into the broader impact of marijuana legalization on the entire drug economy. How would legalizing marijuana impact trade for other drugs like heroine, meth, and crack?

Tonight CNBC premiers another project we helped shoot called Marijuana in America: Colorado Pot Rush, with Harry Smith. Now as the laws have evolved and the industry has grown, businesses have gotten more sophisticated, and the money is increasing dramatically. By 2018 the industry is projected to grow as large as $10 billion nationwide. But it still feels raw, like we are on the cutting edge of this whole thing. For example, businesses still can’t work with banks (because they are nationally regulated) so they are dealing in cash. We filmed in the back room of a store where two girls were counting out stacks of twenties and hundreds, and sorting them into envelopes so they can deliver them to their landlords, pay the power bill, and shop for supplies.

The next gold rush has arrived in Colorado, and other states, as entreprenuers seek out their fortunes like miners staking their claims. And the rest of the world remains interested, watching with fascination as we try to figure out this new frontier.

The Denver Post

Harry Smith, esteemed network TV anchorman/correspondent andlong-ago Denver broadcaster, sticks his nose into a jar labeled “Sublime” and sniffs.

“To an aging boomer like me,” he says, “it’s more than a little disorienting.”

He refers not to the odor, but to the newly legal, over-the-counter status of the marijuana and bud-based products available to any adult in Colorado.

Smith, now an NBC News contributor, returns to his old stomping grounds to lead a carefully balanced, journalistically proper tour of the local pot industry.

“Marijuana in America: Colorado Pot Rush,” premieres Feb. 26 at 10 p.m. on CNBC.

“Innocent or insidious?” he asks. Both sides weigh in with heartfelt testimony. It’s either the end of Prohibition II or the beginning of a dangerous social experiment. Viewers will decide. Mostly, the documentary is wide-eyed regarding the big money involved.

“Everyone is seeing green,” Smith says, one of the hour’s many apparently irresistible puns.

The camera trails pot tourists from dispensary to dispensary, looks in on grows, observes a family trimming buds together, visits a private pot club in Colorado Springs, chronicles pipes, joints, bongs, vape pens and other acoutrements, and eyes the array of edibles — gummies to chocolates and more — flying off shelves since Jan. 1, 2014.

A brief detour checks out the debate in Greeley (true to its roots as a temperence colony) vs. Garden City (historically known for its vices). Then it’s back to shots of citizens inhaling, business owners trying to keep up with demand, and catered pot parties aiming to become “a fixture of polite society.”

A scientist warns of the effects on the teenage brain — including the potential of an 8-point drop in IQ over time — and notes 10 percent of users are likely to become dependent, physically or psychologically. Gov. John Hickenlooper observes the “terrible” message legalization sends to minors. Mason Tvert, provocateur and “the face of legal weed,” has his say.

The Denver Post gets a few nods, too. CNBC interviews The Post’s marijuana editor Ricardo Baca and Jake Browne, recently hired pot critic, who sees his work as being “on the right side of history.”

It’s all told with a slightly incredulous tone. “Marijuana editor”?! That wacky Colorado! But half of the retail pot sold here is bought by out-of-staters, Smith notes. And weed is expected to become a $100 million industry “in year one.”

“Where’s Cheech? Where’s Chong? Even they have moved on,” Smith says. We’re getting past the puns, we’re getting over the Haight-Ashbury references, we’re even outdistancing the image of Cheech & Chong.

This, Smith observes, “is the new normal.”