Evidence that medical marijuana outlets sell to other users

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A study of four medical marijuana outlets in California suggests that many of their customers don't fit the profile expected for businesses focused on sick patients.


https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases ... 021218.php

So now they're judging invisible disabilities and using age as a criteria.. okay..

Or, maybe it's entirely fraudulent AND no one cares because marijuana prohibition has been a complete failure for nearly a century. It's over. Get over it. Some people are gonna smoke weed.

That seems to be reaching a bit...even medical marijuana users will compare different dispensaries and go to whichever serves their needs best/has good prices. So not that abnormal for someone to go a bit out of the way to get to their preferred dispensary. I suppose none of that just really sticks out as absolute proof medical dispensaries would be targeting non medical users.

That said I thought California legalized recreational cannabis anyways....so even if that were the case what is the big deal? A lot of dispensaries here in Colorado are both medical and recreational and serve both types of customers. There are probably dispensaries closer to where I live than the one me and my boyfriend usually go to, but we like that one.

^ Agreed, medical patients will seek out specific strains from specific growers etc only sold at certain dispensaries.. but c'mon.. E V E R Y O N E knows what's up. The probability that there aren't many recreational users who suddenly have "anxiety," when their favourite strain crops out is laughable.

Here, it's not recreationally legal yet.. but there are dozens of dispensaries across the region. Some have been shut down, others continue to operate with city approval. The only people that can LEGALLY buy weed in Canada have a prescription, but that's few and far between. Many people have used dispensaries for years so long as they have a diagnosis of depression, anxiety, pain, adhd etc/whatever. But now? Now you can walk into a dispensary, show your ID & sign a form that says "Yeah yeah, whatever, I accept the minimal federal risk for buying marijuana," and then just buy it as if it's already fully recreationally legal. That's here on the West coast where it's the most liberal in the entire country. One Province to the East & marijuana is still very frowned upon like it's crack cocaine. People have the social licence to buy & consume it all up and down the West coast, though. I'm all but 100% certain that dispensaries are operating in California just like they are here.. completely ignoring prohibition laws because no one cares anymore.

**One of the four outlets had patients who were significantly younger than the local population, and three of the four had more male customers than expected and a different mix of race and ethnicity.
If the dispensaries' customers were truly coming for medical purposes, they should be older than the study found, she said. The average age of customers was 28 to 32.
"In our study, we found that race and ethnicity may be one of the key ways that dispensaries target potential customers," she said.
For example, 48 percent of the customers at one outlet were black, although only 17 percent of the local residents were.**

I do hope that because the customers are predominantly "young" and "black" that this constitutes the only reason they don't fit the profile of somebody who is "sick"

Of course being black in America is a source of stress so what's the big deal?

The other part of the sales equation that this study doesn't reference is that people buy from friends, and then their friends also buy from that friend etc.. and friends often tend to be of the same ethnicity, especially in the USA if you're not white.. so at least one person involved with the ownership or operation of the dispensary likely is a black man, who has black friends, who have more black friends.. or at least it's a friend of one or more black men, anyways.

It's like they've never seen a particular social circle frequent a particular retail establishment before. You know what would blow these peoples' minds? Taking them to a neighbourhood pub and pointing out the similarities in all the regulars.. jebuz.

Word of mouth is plausible, the study seems to give precedence to expectation that the customers should be local? I assume by local mostly a wh***y area

Because the people doing the study are stupid, that's why.

This isn't a neighbourhood pharmacy that just opened up that sells are the exact same Tylenol & Bandaids as every other pharmacy in town.

It's someone's new business in an emerging industry potentially selling proprietary/custom products, brands/strains/preparations unavailable at other local shops, & is somewhat of a social centre considering it's a social drug. This is akin to your buddy opening up a brand new whiskey lounge serving up some rare small batch craft finds from around the world. Friends & others will travel from a greater distance to go to a specialty shop owned by a friend. And then people are creatures of habit.. they'll keep going there.

Clearly the design has low external validity in the real world