With the legalization of recreational marijuana and the opening of recreational shops, the question is only to be expected: Should pot users be able to smoke in their Colorado hotel rooms? To some, this is a sticking point: The buck should stop here and all marijuana products should be banned from use in hotels open to the public. But this is a question that can and should be left to the individual hotel proprietors themselves, allowing owners of each property to decide if it is in their best interests to allow guests to use pot.
Although marijuana has never before been legal in the U.S., smoking cigarettes has long been a part of U.S. culture. As a result, hotels over time have developed their own smoking policies, choosing to operate exclusively as smoking or non-smoking hotels, or offering some rooms where smoking is allowed and some where it is prohibited. That development is very similar to the issue faced by hotels today in whether to allow use of pot in some, all or no rooms at hotels.
Most major hotel chains in the U.S. operate as franchises, meaning although they go by a certain “brand” name, like Hampton Inn, Comfort Inn or Holiday Inn, they are all independently owned and operated by local hotel owners. These individual owners should have the freedom to decide what arrangement with relation to marijuana use best suits their own business. Although the national franchise may have an interest in saying owners should not allow pot use in their hotels because it is still against federal policy, they should not intervene with the business decisions of those who know the local hotel industry best: the local owners.
The results will obviously vary with regard to geography and differences in how pot is viewed in different parts of Colorado. Regardless, it should be the independent hotel owner that makes the final decision, not someone making national policy decisions for hotel chains in their corporate headquarters thousands of miles away. Marijuana is already being closely regulated by Colorado state laws. In the case of independently owned and operated hotels, leave the decision up to the entrepreneur.
