By Maggie
I had kind of expected to find that, following the legalization of
marijuana in Colorado, Boulder's head shop business would merge with the
newly created legal pot business, to create a sort of Super Head Shop —
where one could purchase both Grateful Dead teddy bear T-shirts and the
substances necessary to make those shirts seem cool.
I was wrong.
Other than a handful of smoking devices, the Terrapin Care Station
did not carry any random pot culture accoutrements. No, not even
souvenir post cards. (Which, seriously.) Instead, when my associates and
I walked in the door, we found a lobby not unlike the one at my
dentist's office — pleather couches, soothing green-painted walls, a
long reception desk. It was almost distressingly boring. Except, then,
there was the security guard, the long line at the ATM (a necessity for a
cash-only business), and the round, red take-a-number dispenser. We got
number 420. Yes, that really happened.
The security guard's name was Joseph Compton. He's been working the
job for about two and half months and really enjoys it, far more than
his usual security gigs. The people are nice and happy, he told me. And,
when one provides security for a pot store, one is not expected to
maintain a demeanor of absolute seriousness. "It's nice to not have to
be such a jerk all the time," he said.
When our number was called (At 4:23 in the afternoon. Again, I am not
making this up.) we were escorted through a plain white door and into
the showroom. Here, groups of three or fewer customers are paired with a
salesperson who shows off the store's wares, answers questions, and
makes recommendations about particular products based on your personal
needs. Say, for instance, that you are interested in consuming marijuana
and then enjoying a pleasant evening chatting with friends. Your
salesperson would show you the menu (because there's a menu) and
recommend three or four strains that you should choose from, while also
indicating which strains you should avoid. It's all very civilized. Like
going to the wine store, or the bourbon distillery. (Only without the
free samples.)
Then, you're given small containers of the recommended strains to
smell and examine as you make your decision. This is all probably old
hat to those of you who live in states with medical marijuana laws. For
those of us who do not live in those states, it was a very surreal
experience.
The marijuana comes in containers with child safety caps and warning labels on the side.
In fact, that was the part of the experience that felt oddest to me —
the perfectly normalized commercialization of a product that I had not
really previously thought of as a commercial product. Suddenly, there
are brands and branding. There are locally grown and organic assurances.
There is well-designed packaging, from companies that are clearly just
waiting to enter a larger market. Check out the chai-flavored pot mints
in the lower right of the next photo.
And, as a natural outgrowth of that, there are even consumer
advocates and investigative reports on company practices. Our
salesperson gave us a tour of some of the different edibles sold at
Terrapin Care Station, including Dixie chocolates and Wana Rolls. The
benefit to products like this, she said, is that you can more easily
control the dosage. There are 100mg of THC in the Dixie black and white
bar. So you can cut that into fourths and know about how much THC you're
consuming.
Except, in March,
The Denver Post and
The Cannabinist ran independent testing of a wide variety of commercial edibles and found that
the actual THC concentrations were usually very different
from what was advertised on the packaging. Most of the time, the
investigation found that folks in Colorado are getting far less THC then
they paid for. Sometimes, though, they're getting considerably more,
and both outcomes have their downsides.
All of which sort of left me wondering about how the
commercialization of pot is going to change pot culture specifically,
and how popular culture conceives of pot, in general. For the better
part of a century, financial relationships surrounding marijuana have
depended largely on personal relationships — and the trust that came
with that. If marijuana is just one more product in foil packaging from a
faceless corporation, how does that affect the way we think about it?
If somebody's mom can run into the pot store on the way home from work,
leaving her groceries, dog, and child in the car (which is something we
saw) just as if she were running into the convenience store for a gallon
of milk ... is pot still cool? I mean, people are still going to use
it. Obviously. But while the way I think about pot is pretty similar to
the attitudes and ideas my parents' generation has about it, the same is
unlikely to be true 20 or 30 years from now, when my daughter is an
adult. When weed is no longer illegal, does it cease to be part of the
counterculture? When the counterculture becomes mainstream, what is it?
Dude. I don't even know. Welcome to a brave new world. A world where your pot comes with a receipt.
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