The state already licenses more than 500 medical marijuana dispensaries, and only those outlets may apply to sell it for recreational use.
The owner of a Denver-based chain of medical marijuana dispensaries who wants to expand and sell pot to leisure consumers, Shawn Phillips, was first in line on Friday morning.
The mountain town of Boulder initially decided on a local ban on the sale of marijuana for recreational use despite the town having several medical dispensaries, but has since relented.
Owners of cannabis dispensaries lined up to collect the permits in Denver: an initial batch of 42 licences were issued, most to growers but around a dozen to shops.
Colorado's Marijuana Enforcement Division spokeswoman Julie Postlethwait explained that the laws do not permit consumption of marijuana in public in any form nor on the premises of dispensaries in California-style pot cafes.
In October, California's four federal prosecutors threw the state (and drug-lovers everywhere in the country) into confusion when they announced their intention aggressively to go after landlords who rent their buildings to dispensaries of medical marijuana, and even after newspapers, radio and television stations who accept advertising from sellers of the weed.
Colorado has a fat rule book and most dispensaries are well run, but they can do little about customers passing pot to children or taking it across state lines.
FROM the Colorado state capitol in Denver, head south on Broadway, one of the city's main arteries, and before long you find yourself in "Broadsterdam", a cluster of dispensaries with names like Ganja Gourmet and Evergreen Apothecary.
Even large towns must make do with meagre dispensaries and most lack doctors.
Even in Colorado, dispensaries rather than shops accounted for two-thirds of sales between January and April.As support for legalisation grows, more states will do it.
Until recently Colorado's dispensaries were obliged to grow at least 70% of the cannabis they sold, and cultivators had to retail at least 70% of what they grew.
