Drug culture in America hit a major turning point on New Year's Day.
As of Jan. 1, 2014, people can buy marijuana in Colorado to use recreationally. At this time, Colorado is about as legally relaxed as you can get when it comes to marijuana.
Naturally, people across the country have been watching to see what happened: if there would be enough pot to keep up with demand, how people would behave, and how long the lines would be.
I decided to check it out for myself since I was visiting family in Colorado for the holidays.
Click to see what it was like at Colorado pot shops New Year's Day >
Recreational marijuana became legal under Amendment 64 to the Colorado state constitution, which passed by a 10-point margin last November and allowed marijuana shops to open their doors to the public as early as today. Many shops are still waiting on licenses, but hundreds opened on time.
"It's completely unprecedented," Terence McKenna, 29, told Business Insider as he waited in line to make a purchase. We talked to him outside a marijuana shop called Kush Denver, a 20-minute drive from his residence in Boulder.
J.D. Leadam, 24, flew in from the liberal San Francisco Bay Area for Colorado's big marijuana milestone.
"I'm pretty surprised California didn't do this first," Leadam told Business Insider. "I'm not a big smoker. I'm here more for the novelty."
Many stores now selling recreational pot used to be only dispensaries where medical marijuana patients got their prescriptions. Now they have significant retail-only sections, set up to mimic any old shop selling any old product.
"People are going to be amazed at how normal it seems," Cynthia Johnston of the NOMRL Women's Alliance of Los Angeles told Business Insider.
Pot was set to go on sale at 8 a.m, so I woke up around 6:45. Here's a view of Denver from the road.
Not many people were out and about.
But the parking lot at 3D Cannabis, which is near the Denver Coliseum, was packed.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider