Is it? I get that the aesthetics suck right now but we’re talking about drug polices that have ruined people’s lives. Anyway it’s all going to be a delivery model once the industry is able to operate above board. And who says the weed store can’t be as boogie as a coffee shop?
Yeah seriously. Legalization is just finally getting fully underway in NJ, and more than half the (many) abandoned storefronts in my town are now up-and-coming weed places. There was absolutely nothing else coming, so I’m pretty much fine with it.
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A big reason the dispensaries are so shady right now is that they can’t work in a fully legal framework.
I have to believe that we’re going to see Amazon or something like that snatch up the weed delivery market, with pretentious little shops in upscale neighborhoods. Suburban white dudes are going to become insufferable the way they’ve been with IPAs.
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Cannabis causing (in some people) short term psychosis lasting hours to weeks has been a well known issue “forever” but likely worsening with increased THC concentrations lately.
More controversial historically due to numerous possible confounders is cannabis contribution to causing chronic psychosis (schizophrenia) but recently seems more and more clear there likely a % of folks with schizophrenia who never would have developed it if not for cannabis. Lot of these studies from Scandinavia recently.
Main risk group they seeing is who you would expect, young dudes who use heavily.
We just have bylaws that mean the weekdshops looks like normal shops. No pot leaf art or any of that tacky stuff you see in Vegas for example. They have to be subtle and blend in.
For all of the talk about cannabis “causing” long-term psychosis, I haven’t seen any evidence for an increase in schizophrenia over the past 20 years, when cannabis became stronger.
Some therapist on a message board claimed that 20% of people who use cannabis will develop psychosis. She is clearly an idiot, since if this was close to true this would be THE #1 HEALTH CRISIS of the 21s Century,.
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I hate these arguments that if something has an adverse effect for a small part of population it should be banned for all. Everything in life has risk. We make these types of risk assessments hundreds of times every day.
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I agree with this. Kids will get weed from friends and family who buy it legally, or in extreme cases pay someone going in a weed store. It would be very much like alcohol. (Or is)
This is where the Scandinavians and their excellent medical records are coming into play.
“One argument against the causal hypothesis has been that, with increasing use and potency of cannabis in the population, one should have observed an increase in the incidence of schizophrenia, which has been postulated to be absent. A long-standing dogma states that the incidence of schizophrenia has remained stable over time, but Kühl et al recently showed that the incidence of schizophrenia has steadily increased in Denmark from 2000 to 2012, especially in younger groups. This study did not, however, make any claims that this should have been due to increasing use or potency of cannabis.”
ETA- will say the people who published that paper said better diagnosis/access was explanation but there increasing “smoke” last few years IMO
yeah. my buddy and i kept making jokes about “the circle of life” where every failing building gets a second or third life as a potential vape shop and then a dispensary before it becomes finally discarded.
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yeah i dont really mind them. the fact that most have to store lots of cash for short periods of time isn’t great, but i’ve never thought of it as any kind of neighborhood risk. i live what i would call hood-adjacent and i don’t know of too many problems with them or anything.
there was one in the gentrified little street i live on in a nice new store front but it closed down and became an old timey clock repair store… because we all need one of those.
The cash on hand is a bit of an American thing too as almost nobody uses cash in Canada.
We did have a bylaw change here because originally they had to have blacked out windows, which made robbery easier. Now they can be open. I think that was more robbery of the weed than cash though.
Yeah, those dispensaries are magnets for robberies because of the case problem. And the shops are often armed as a result.
Here in NYC it took two years after legalization before the city actually started issing retail licenses. That process initially was supposed to favor people who had been arrested for selling pot; so immediately the city was peppered with shops with names like “Illegal Weed Shop 420” I presume with the hopes that the cops would shut them down and they could jump to the front of the license list. Haven’t looked this up but would not be surprised if marijuana dealing citations spiked after legalization.
This is an amazing setup for a The Producers-style comedy.
Problem is now all the illegal joints are getting shut down and I can’t find anyone who sells my favorite edibles, “Captain Cush: Ooops All Cadmium”
Timothy Chalumet and Zendaya are two stoners trying to run a shop that gets busted for legal reasons but they’re too upper-middle-class to know how to do street crimes themselves so they enlist Will Ferrell. This is a great idea for a movie.
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Ah, you mean a money laundering front
Be very careful about reports like this. 100k “hospitalizations” probably includes things like “came in as an opiate overdose and the tox screen came back positive for marijuana”.
The talk about kids is a little trickier, but it’s kind of hard to explain. A super high kid and a super sick kid can look very similar, so the biggest harm for a cannabis overdose is all the medical things we do for sick kids because we don’t know the kid just had a few gummies. Meanwhile, a high af kid who we 100% know got into a few gummies just gets discharged to nap it off
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but the legalized kind. the whole street is a tax haven gift from the city as long as the buildings stay well maintained and occupied. the bldg owner might have put the clock place in himself… there are literally FIVE art galleries/studios on my walk to the convenience store.