Mainstreaming marijuana in the mountains: smoke clears for pot in Breckenridge, but not on Main Street.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: CANNA-BIZ

ON MAIN STREET in Breckenridge you can get a tattoo. You can buy a bottle of scotch or snarf down fat-laden french fries advertised as "heavenly." The one thing you cannot get after January: marijuana.

Seventy percent of Breckenridge voters decided in December to make cannabis dispensaries off-limits in the town's tourist-oriented shopping areas. Opposition leaders had declared that cannabis shops on the town's Victorian-cute Main Street, even if limited to upstairs locations, jeopardize the town's tourist-friendly brand.

Breckenridge has had a conflicted stance regarding cannabis sales. The town had no hesitation about allowing sales of marijuana for medicinal uses after it was authorized by state voters. In 2009, town voters went one step further, voting to decriminalize marijuana altogether. That measure to allow possession of up to one ounce passed with 73 percent of the vote. It was the second municipality in Colorado to do so, following Denver. In 2012, when 55 percent of Colorado voters cast their lot with full legalization, Breckenridge was there with 70 percent.

Other mountain towns have similarly tolerant attitudes toward drug use, particularly marijuana. For decades Aspen boycotted the war on drugs, as local law-enforcement agencies openly feuded with Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Back in the day, Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis hung out with Hunter Thompson who, until he committed suicide in 2005, made no secret of his drug use.

Marijuana was also no stranger to Vail--the ski area of business tycoons. The ski resort's first detachable quadlift was officially called the Vista Bahn, but was nicknamed the Rasta Bahn, because the cover designed to shield occupants from wind and snow made illicit activity that much more covert.

BACK IN BRECK

In Breckenridge, the town council initially allowed medicinal dispensaries on Main Street, so long as they were not on street-level. A half-dozen such stores at one time were trying to do business in second-floor locations. Most, however, gravitated over time to the town's northern edge, in a service-oriented business district along Airport Road.

"Airpot" Road, as locals have dubbed it, had four cannabis dispensaries entering ski season this winter. The area had been called the "green-light district," with dispensaries' neon green signage winking down the way. What you won't see much of, if any, is natural light in these cannabis shops. There's a sense of the underground even now that...