A Denver-based company has begun marijuana-themed excursions around the city this week, and the co-owner says its first group of tours is sold out.
My 420 Tours, believed to be the first U.S. company to specialize in marijuana-oriented tours, is hosting almost 200 people for its three- and five-day tours, which range in price from $500 to $850 a person.
420 (four-twenty) is a pot-culture term referring to the use of cannabis. April 20 has evolved into a counterculture holiday to celebrate marijuana and lobby for the legalization of the drug.
The tours will include of a visit to Denver’s Native Roots Apothecary, cannabis-growing classes, cooking classes, concerts by musical acts (and noted marijuana proponents) Cypress Hill and Method Man, and a trip to the Cannabis Cup — an annual marijuana-growing contest and festival hosted by High Times magazine.
No pot will be sold on the tours, says My 420 Tours co-founder Matt Brown, who says the tours are designed to educate visitors about pot consumption far beyond recreational smoking.
"We have a great chef teaching the basics of extraction, and will be making things like oils, butters, trail mix, fried rice and desserts, all of which will be cannabis-infused."
"It’s not like the brownies your buddy made back in college,” said Brown, a medical-marijuana patient. His partner has a background in event production, Brown said.
As for the marijuana dispensary, the tour aims to show visitors that “it’s definitely not scary behind the door, and it looks like any other store,” he said.
With this week’s tours sold out, Brown is planning weekly tours that would host 30 to 50 people each. Because the tours provide transportation and the tour operator is not selling pot to customers, the company won't be hassled by local authorities, Brown said.
Colorado’s Amendment 64, passed last November, will allow for recreational, non-medical marijuana use for those at least 21 years old, starting July 2014.
“Right now, we’ve had to think a lot harder about how we can create the experience” to comply with current laws, Brown said. “A year from now, it will be much easier.”
Follow Danny King on Twitter @dktravelweekly.