Marijuana Blog

BIDDEFORD, Maine — A type of store Massachusetts has never seen before could soon be opening in a neighborhood near you: a medical marijuana dispensary. The new state law that went into effect last month allows up to 35 of them. And some communities, worried they’ll be a negative influence, are trying to ban these businesses.

 

In the state of Maine, eight dispensaries have opened over the last couple of years. So we visited one in the city of Biddeford to see how it works.

 

“We try and keep a very low profile,” says Canuvo owner Glenn Peterson, a rebellious-looking middle-aged guy with a shaved head and goatee. “There’s enough controversy without having neon marijuana signs flashing.”

 

Peterson says he hunted for a location for his dispensary for a year and kept striking out with hesitant landlords, banks and zoning boards. Finally, despite the objections of some of the other tenants, he bought the condo in the complex he’s now located in and opened for business. And he says he later helped fight –successfully — for a change in state law to prohibit towns from banning dispensaries.

 

Patients need a doctor’s approval to buy the dispensary’s marijuana, which Peterson grows on a separate property about an hour away. In the so-called dispensing rooms, there are display cases of pipes and grinders for sale, and stackable plastic drawers filled with jars and bags of dried marijuana. This pot isn’t just for smoking. Patients can vaporize it using a device similar to an asthma inhaler. They can eat or drink one of Canuvo’s homemade medical marijuana edibles, from chocolates to Rice Krispies squares to tea. A big chalkboard lists the specials of the day, including cannabis butter. Patients spread the butter on toast or spaghetti and then have a “medicated meal,” according to Peterson.

 

Read more: http://www.wbur.org