Breaking News – California rolls its own recreational pot sales out for…

Hundreds of excited people waited in huge lines in California as the Golden State turned a shade greener with its first sales of recreational marijuana on New Year’s Day.California launched the world’s largest regulated commercial market for recreational marijuana on Monday, as dozens of newly licensed stores opened for business up and down the state.A pot shop in Santa Cruz hung a banner proclaiming ‘Prohibition is Over!’ and one in San Diego handed out T-shirts showing the first moon landing and declaring a ‘giant leap for mankind’ to mark the occasion.Freebies and food greeted those who waited in long lines to get their hands on weed with names like ‘Oh Geezus’ and ‘Banana Breath.”I’m scared, I’m excited, I’m relieved,’ said Kimberly Cargile, director of a shop in Sacramento that has sold medical pot since 2009.Cargile’s shop, A Therapeutic Alternative, opened at 9am with the celebratory cutting of a red ribbon – a symbolic gesture that could be seen as a nod to those who cut through red tape in time to open the doors to a new era.The signs that Califonia was tripping toward legal pot sales were evident well before the stroke of midnight.California highways flashed signs before New Year’s Eve that said ‘Drive high, Get a DUI,’ reflecting law enforcement concerns about stoned drivers.Weedmaps, the phone app that allows customers to rate shops, delivery services and shows their locations, ran a full-page ad Sunday in the Los Angeles Times that said, ‘Smile California. It’s Legal.’In shops where recreational weed was on the menu, former medical marijuana patients got in line with pot-heads and hippies, as well as first-timers willing to give legal weed a chance.Heather Sposeto, 50, who is not a marijuana user, wanted to see the hype around legal weed, so she went to Northstar Holistic Collective in Sacramento with her boyfriend, who is a daily pot smoker.She said it felt surreal to be in a shop with options ranging from chocolate edibles to the green flower and said she was considering taking a toke now that it’s not illicit.’I come from the era where it was super illegal,’ Sposeto said.At San Diego’s Mankind Cooperative, lines were 40 minutes long and buyers from as far away as Iowa, Kansas and Canada waited with their California cannabis brethren to ogle offerings such as ‘Island Sweet Skunk’ and a particularly potent strain called, ‘The Sheriff.”We’re insane down here. And it’s still going on, girlfriend,’ said marketing retailer Cathy Bliss said.Outside KindPeoples dispensary in Santa Cruz, which tacked up the end of prohibition sign, people gathered in shorts and sweatshirts, winter coats and wool hats while waiting to get inside. A gray-bearded professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, wearing a blue sport coat was the first customer.In Orange County, shops in Santa Ana received the green light over the weekend to open and a steady flow showed up at ShowGrow.Ellen St. Peter, 61, shopped with her son, Bryce St. Peter,
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