A recent Colorado Tourism Office survey of summer travelers shows 48 percent were influenced by legal recreational pot 
 
 Marijuana businesses have long proclaimed that cannabis is drawing visitors to Colorado. Now they have proof. 
 
 A study commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office and presented to the office's board of directors on Wednesday shows legal weed as a growing motivator for trips to Colorado — conflicting with the mantra of tourism officials statewide that savvy marketing alone is responsible for record visitation and spending in the past two years. 
 
 While the state's "Come to Life" ad campaign is certainly successful, surveys in October and November of potential summertime visitors who were exposed to the state's tourism ads revealed that the marijuana laws influenced vacation decisions nearly 49 percent of the time. 
 
 Budtender Kate Evans, behind counter, helps a customer at Native Roots Dispensary at 1550 Champa street in Denver on December 9. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post) 
 
 "I think it is rearing its head as a significant travel and tourism amenity for visitors coming to Colorado," said Al White, who retired as boss of the Colorado Tourism Office in August and now serves on the board of a cannabis tourism company. 
 
 But the survey's director said the questions may not have captured the opinion of people who opted out of Colorado travel because of legal pot. And only 8 percent of the Colorado tourists who responded to the survey said they visited a marijuana dispensary. 
 
 "I think definitely the laws are having an influence when people are considering Colorado. We can see that it's still not a large percentage in terms of what people are doing, but it's become more of a motivator for those who want to do it," said Denise Miller, director of tourism surveys for Strategic Marketing and Research Insights, or SMARI, as she presented the midyear update to the tourism office's board of directors. "It's certainly having some influence — both, I think, positive and negative — on that decision process." 
 
 SMARI conducted 33-question surveys of 3,254 tourists from target markets in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis and other cities. About 10 percent of those surveyed had vacationed in Colorado between April and September. 
 
 The state tourism office has spent more than $5.3 million to run its "Come to Life" television, print, billboard and digital ads in these cities as well as nationally this summer. The campaign hit 11.1 million households, up from 9.4 million in 2014. 
 
 SMARI estimated the 2015 summer ad campaign spurred 2.1 million leisure trips, generating an economic impact of $2.6 billion. That means for every dollar the state invested in its tourism promotion effort, it generated a $490 return, up from $344 in 2014. 
 
 So the ad campaign is working very well. But those ads never mention marijuana. Yet, 22 percent of survey respondents said marijuana was "extremely influential" in their decision to visit Colorado. Twenty percent said it was "very much influential" and nearly 7 percent said it was "somewhat influential." 
 
 But only 8 percent of tourists said they visited a marijuana dispensary during their trip to Colorado — the same percentage who said they visited a pot shop last year, according to SMARI's survey. 
 
 Of the 8 percent who went pot shopping, 85 percent this year said marijuana was a primary motivator of their visit to Colorado, up from 29 percent last year. 
 
 Retail sales of recreational marijuana became legal Jan. 1, 2014. 
 
 Last year — the first year SMARI asked marijuana questions to potential Colorado vacationers — 65 percent of Colorado visitors did not consider legal weed in their vacation decision, with the remainder split between respondents saying they were "more likely to visit" and "less likely to visit" because of marijuana. 
 
 This year, those results moved slightly, with 20 percent of potential Colorado vacationers saying the state's marijuana laws made them more likely to book a vacation and 15 percent saying they were less likely. The remainder said it wasn't an issue. 
 
 The question in SMARI's summer survey asked: "How much did the legalization of marijuana usage influence your decision to visit Colorado?" 
 
 SMARI's Miller said her team needs to follow up with better questions. 
 
 New tourism office chief Cathy Ritter, who started her job last week, said last month that legal cannabis is "a great topic for discussion and a great topic for more research." 
 
 Ritter did not speak during the board discussion of marijuana Wednesday. But in November, when she was named to the post, she said it "seems to be that the tourism program today is essentially silent on the whole issue." 
 
 In Telluride, where 80 percent of voters approved recreational weed in 2012, the new tourism tagline is "The Most Colorado Place on Earth." It's one of the few Colorado towns that doesn't ignore pot as a guest amenity. One local dispensary delivers goods through its own app. 
 
 "We dabble, but ... we don't want to fly the freak flag. I don't want to put it under the rug, but I don't want it to be the most important thing we do," said Michael Martelon, the president of the Telluride Tourism Board, noting that taxes from weed in the town rarely top 3 percent of the town's overall sales tax revenue. 
 
 When White announced 2014's record visitation and spending in June this year, he was quick to not credit cannabis. 
 
 "This is because we are doing a good job in Colorado. Is marijuana beneficial?" said White in June of this year. "Marginally, yes, I think it may be a decision influencer for some people coming." 
 
 Marijuana is no longer in the margins of Colorado tourism. It's taking a starring role. 
 
 "It's extremely influential," White said this week. 
 
 Danny Schaefer let out a hoot when he heard the recent survey numbers. His My420Tours hosts 120 to 200 visitors a week and just inked a deal with a national hotel chain to host his clients, each getting a cannabis vaporizer to use in the room when they check-in. (He won't name the chain yet. White is a member of his board.) 
 
 "This is absolutely validating," said Schaefer, who has urged tourism leaders to celebrate marijuana before other states where the recreational sales are legal, including Oregon and Washington, steal the tourism thunder. He's making plans to expand to Portland, Ore., where, he said, local tourism officials are welcoming him. 
 
 "The state of Colorado has had an amazing opportunity to embrace this industry," he said. "It a complete advantage for Colorado to become the Napa Valley and Sonoma County of cannabis." 
 
 Selling, possessing and using marijuana is illegal under federal law. State officials say they have never promoted marijuana because Amendment 64 regulations prevent pot businesses from advertising outside Colorado. 
 
 Schaefer says that's fine. But visitors need information. Why doesn't the state help on that front, he wondered. Education doesn't have to be advertising, he said. 
 
 "Shatter, wax, hash, dabs and transdermals. Our visitors, they have no idea what the modern industry has in the store for them and they are really lacking that education," Schaefer said. "Consumption education is absolutely necessary. We have so many people saying we were looking for information on marijuana on Colorado.com or at a Visit Denver welcome center and they couldn't find anything even mentioning marijuana. But they found hundreds of fliers and pamphlets on craft beer and liquor." 
 
 Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins ||||| Partygoers listen to music and smoke marijuana on one of several days of the annual 4/20 marijuana festival, in Denver's downtown Civic Center Park, Saturday April 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) The Colorado Tourism Office has spent more than $5.3 million on its campaign enticing visitors to the state, all without mentioning marijuana. 
 
 Yet a new survey by the office finds that potential summertime tourists were influenced by marijuana laws about 49 percent of the time, reports the Denver Post. 
 
 Former Colorado Tourism Office head Al White has previously called marijuana's effect on tourism "mariginal." He now calls it "extremely influential" and serves on the board of a cannabis tourism company, the paper reports. 
 
 Over in southwest Colorado, a survey of tourists leaving pot shops found that visitors weren't coming specifically for marijuana. Fort Lewis College professor Lorraine Taylor told the Durango Herald that her survey indicates pot is more like "icing on the cake." ||||| Underlying the debate over marijuana legalization has been an equally fierce battle between marijuana and another so-called vice industry: alcohol. 
 
 As an increasing number of states look to join the four states and Washington DC in legalizing recreational marijuana, many in the alcohol industry have feared that legalized weed will cut into their existing profits. 
 
 But a few years into Colorado legalization, alcohol sales are up in the state, and those in the alcohol business have embraced their fellow industry. 
 
 In the 18 months since recreational sales were legalized in Colorado, “we’ve just seen phenomenal growth”, said Justin Martz, 32, who runs Mr B’s Wine & Spirits in downtown Denver. He noted that there was some concern initially about legalization, “but it’s really turned out to be a non-issue”. In fact, he said, “if anything it’s kind of helped us. A high tide lifts all boats.” 
 
 Bryan Simpson, spokesman for the Fort Collins craft brewery New Belgium, agreed that doomsayers in the alcohol industry were wrong. He argued that rather than alcohol and pot directly competing against one another for consumers’ dollars, the two can be mutually beneficial in boosting overall sales. “There’s definitely some crossover in the two communities of beer drinkers and herb enjoyers,” Simpson said. “But I don’t think people are doubling down in one category or the other.” To underscore that point, he noted that legal marijuana has had “no demonstrable impact at all in terms of sales” at New Belgium. 
 
 Tax records show that alcohol sales have continued to grow in Colorado despite the rapid rise of recreational marijuana. Even as tax revenues from marijuana nearly tripled between June 2014 through May 2015, alcohol sales continued to steadily increase as well, with alcohol excise taxes rising 2.1%, the same increase as the year prior. 
 
 This symbiotic relationship comes after the two groups went head-to-head in the fight over legalization. 
 
 Industry groups have feared that marijuana legalization would deplete interest in alcohol. “Consumer preferences and purchases may shift due to a host of factors,” including “the potential legalization of marijuana use on a more widespread basis within the United States,” warned the Brown-Forman Corporation, a publicly traded liquor manufacturer that produces many well-known brands including Jack Daniel’s and Southern Comfort, in a recent SEC filing. 
 
 This fear is backed by some academic research, which has found that many consumers consider alcohol and marijuana to be substitutes. One study found that legalization of medical marijuana in many states led to sharp decreases in alcohol consumption. The alcohol industry is “smart to worry about it”, one of the study’s authors, University of Colorado Denver economics professor Daniel Rees, told the Denver Post. 
 
 In some cases, alcohol groups have openly opposed weed legalization initiatives and backed that opposition up with major campaign donations. In 2010, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors made a $10,000 contribution to Public Safety First, a group fighting Proposition 19, a measure to legalize recreational marijuana in the Golden State. The initiative ended up losing by seven points. 
 
 The marijuana industry has taken aim at alcohol as well. Nearly every marijuana legalization campaign bases its argument on comparisons to alcohol, contending that the plant is less dangerous and frequently using campaign name variations of “regulate marijuana like alcohol”. 
 
 In 2013, there was a big dust-up between the Marijuana Policy Project and the Beer Institute after the former put up advertisements in Portland, Maine with middle-aged people declaring: “I prefer marijuana to alcohol because it’s less harmful to my body” and “I prefer marijuana to alcohol because it doesn’t make me rowdy or reckless”. Chris Thorne of the Beer Institute responded that it’s misleading to compare marijuana to beer, because it’s “distinctly different both as a product and an industry”. 
 
 Part of the reason for the alcohol and marijuana industries’ success may be a boost in Colorado tourism. Though some state officials insist marijuana is not attracting new visitors, Colorado tourism set record highs in 2014, the first year of legalization, with 71.3 million visitors who collectively spent $18.6bn. 
 
 Many in the alcohol industry credit marijuana with helping boost tourism. Martz said he frequently asks tourists in his downtown store what brought them to Colorado. “Legalization adds to the overall draw,” he noted, even if most tourists don’t come solely for pot. Simpson concurred that the number of tourists visiting New Belgium has continued to increase steadily, including from some pot-inclined tourists. 
 
 And alcohol isn’t simply a remora to the marijuana shark; the two industries are even finding ways to help one another out. Many out-of-towners who visit Mr B’s Wine & Spirits ask Martz where the closest dispensary is. He’s not only happy to help direct them, but also has a stack of coupons from the dispensary in his shop to hand out.
– Legal marijuana is taking tourism in Colorado to new highs, if a new study is to be believed. The Denver Post reports a study commissioned by the Colorado Tourism Office found nearly 49% of Colorado visitors between April and September came at least in part because of pot. "I think it is rearing its head as a significant travel and tourism amenity for visitors coming to Colorado," a former tourism office head says. The survey also showed 20% of potential tourists were more likely to visit Colorado because of legal weed compared to 15% who were less likely. Somewhat surprisingly, only 8% of tourists surveyed admitted to actually visiting a marijuana dispensary while in the state. A smaller study out of Fort Lewis College found most tourists come to Colorado for other reasons, but legal marijuana is "the icing on the cake," the Durango Herald reports. According to the Post, Colorado has welcomed a record number of tourists in the past two years. Prior to the study, tourism officials had been crediting that increase solely to "savvy marketing." The Colorado Tourism Office spent more than $5.3 million on a new advertising campaign, which doesn't mention pot at all, Colorado Public Radio reports. But it shouldn't be that way, the owner of one pot tourism company tells the Post: "The state of Colorado has had an amazing opportunity to embrace this industry. It is a complete advantage for Colorado to become the Napa Valley and Sonoma County of cannabis."