Legal weed sales bring long lines to Colorado

 DENVER (AP):

Long lines and blustery winter weather greeted Colorado marijuana shoppers testing the nation's first legal recreational pot shops Wednesday.

It was hard to tell from talking to the shoppers, however, that they had waited hours in snow and frigid wind.

waiting not a problem

"It's a huge deal for me," said Andre Barr, a 34-year-old deliveryman who drove from Niles, Michigan, to be part of the legal weed experiment. "This wait is nothing."

The world was watching as Colorado unveiled the modern world's first fully legal marijuana industry - no doctor's note required (as in 18 states and Washington, DC) and no unregulated production of the drug (as in the Netherlands). Uruguay has fully legalised pot but hasn't yet set up its system.

Colorado had 24 shops open Wednesday, most of them in Denver, and aside from long lines and sporadic reports of shoppers cited for smoking pot in public, there were few problems.