The Green Rush Comes to Colorado
by Joyce Miller
An article in the Huffington Post last August, before the January 1 legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado (known as Amendment 64), reported that the media remained largely hostile to promoting the business of selling marijuana. Online search engines, newspaper publishers, and billboard operators shied away from any association with marijuana retailers. A big stumbling block to marijuana marketing is that the federal tax code classifies marijuana dispensary operators as drug traffickers. Marketing professionals, understandably, are hesitant to be accomplices to illegal activity.
Worries about marketing were needless, however, because the media, through its excessive coverage of Colorado’s new law, along with stand-up comedians and others, inadvertently promoted the industry quite well. Even without traditional marketing venues, people (around 40 percent nonresidents, as reported by some sellers) flocked to the stores, some of which ran out of product the first day.