| slatercenter.com |
For the second time this month: Congrats, Rhode Island. Your medical marijuana patients now have somewhere to purchase medical marijuana if you they grow their own.
The Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center opened Friday, just in time for the 4/20 weekends that celebrates – among other aspects of cannabis culture – medical marijuana. According to store employees, there was a constant flow of patients.
Innovation is inevitable in any industry, and the field of medical marijuana is no different. With laws already in the books in 18 states and more on the way, investors who might not know their Blue Chips from their Blue Dream are flocking to these regions to stake their claim in what they see as the next big commodity.
White-collar Wall Street-types can certainly see the budding upside to sinking money into dispensaries, growing operations, and other cannabis related retail outlets. But those potential gains are often outweighed by the prospects of inventory control, employee management, product naiveté. And of course, the grey area that exists in all current state-level medical marijuana laws that fly in the face of Federal statute. Cue MedBox.
| FAIL. |
Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division has been a colossal waste of money and has failed to meet the goals set for them in 2010. That’s the sum of an audit released earlier this week by the state that lambasts the agency for their ineptitude over the last two-plus years.
Taking over an old Curves Gym location on North Capitol Street just thirteen blocks north of the Capitol Reflecting Poool, Capital City Care is set to be the first medical marijuana dispensary to open in Washington D.C. roughly three years after medical marijuana laws were passed in the district. Capital City owners say they’ll open sometime mid-April with four strains, hash and a few accessories for patients. You read that: four strains.
Update – Wednesday, March 20, 2013: The Maryland Senate voted to decriminalize marijuana possession of up to ten grams of marijuana yesterday. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Robert Zirkin, a democrat from Baltimore, told the Washington Post that he was pleased with his colleagues and says the House would be smart to pass the legislation.
“Incarceration does not make sense [for small amounts],” he told the PostWashington Post newsroom.)
| Nevada Sen. Tick Segerblom. |
Could medical marijuana dispensaries dot the landscape between the casinos of Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada? That’s what one Nevada state senator is hoping to accomplish this session with a bill that would legalize medical marijuana centers in that state.
Move over, Hot Tamales, there’s a new sheriff in town: pot tamales. In further proof that Mexican food has conquered America, the ABC Cooperative in Orange County, CA began offering them due to customer demand. They don’t make them on-site, but rather has someone else make batches, both medicated and not. So far, the only pot flavor is pineapple (you know, to take care of the sweet and the savory at the same time), but more will inevitably follow. OC Weekly has the full story.
If you’re buying a pipe, you’re going to need something to put into it. Such is the logic of giving away free marijuana to customers who buy pipes in Colorado, but that’s not quite the way it works, according to the Colorado Attorney General and Denver Police Chief. Westword has the story.
Former California medical marijuana collective owner and current medical ganja delivery driver John Szwec was minding his own business on Monday night when two men approached him and robbed him of his money and an ounce of medical cannabis outside of a Denny’s before the pair sped off in a getaway car.