Brittany Zewe, left, Jess Vanderpool at Denver Kush Club in Denver, Colorado on January 1, 2014. The first legal sales of marijuana in the world took place in Colorado on Wednesday morning. (Seth McConnell, The Denver Post)

Photos from around the state: Pot shops are open for business in Colorado

By Ricardo Baca, The Denver Post / Images by Denver Post Staff Photographers

For 22-year-old Mississippi natives Anthony Terranova and Jordan Thurman, the choice to move to Colorado was a no-brainer.

“We got tired of worrying about going to jail for smoking pot,” Terranova said as he inched his way closer to the door of City-Med near the University of Denver on Wednesday morning. “Moving to Colorado was an easy decision.”

Terranova and Thurman said they wake-and-baked Wednesday morning before facing the line that wrapped down East Evans Street and around the corner of South Franklin Street. And what were they in the mood for?

“A little goodie bag — a little bit of everything,” Terranova said. “Edibles, a drink, some hash, some green.”

A few miles away at the Evergreen Apothecary on South Broadway, the first 250 people in line proudly held official-looking, numbered green certificates — proof of their place in history.

“This town’s been smoking for a long time,” one gentleman said proudly as he looked at the line some assumed would take four hours.

Andrew Stephenson was about halfway through that line: “This is cool, because I usually just smoke his weed,” he said, gesturing to his friend. “Today I’m just going to buy a little bit of my own, something to smoke, probably a sativa.”

A bit closer to Evergreen’s door waited 21-year-old Maryland resident Andrew Ahrnsbock, who planned his Colorado vacation around a pot-buying excursion in Denver and a snowboarding break in Breckenridge.

“I’m going into the shop with an open mind,” Ahrnsbock. “Yesterday at Breck was amazing, too – some fresh show and the smell of weed everywhere.”