NORTH BONNEVILLE, Wash. —
Deep in the Columbia River Gorge, a short drive from the Bridge of the
Gods, the nation’s only government-run marijuana shop was running low on
weed.
The store had been open for just a few days. Inside,
manager Robyn Legun was frantically trying to restock. Outside, five
customers stood waiting for the doors to open. Someone cracked a joke
about this being a typical government operation, always running late.
But,
of course, it’s not. This government store, bearing the cozy name
Cannabis Corner, sells dozens of strains of marijuana and in several
different forms, from pungent buds to infused cookies and coffee. It
sells glass bongs and rolling papers. And it does it all at the
direction of the North Bonneville Public Development Authority, making
the local government uniquely dependent on this once-illicit drug.
“If
I don’t get this order in this morning, we’re going to be out for the
weekend,” said Legun, 36, fretting over her inventory list.
Legun
used to manage a Bed Bath & Beyond. Now, she leads a team of 10
people trained to sell pot. Her new government job had her placing
orders for Blue Magoo, Purple Kush and Pineapple Express.
“I can’t believe this is my life,” she said.
Just
two years ago, selling marijuana for nonmedical purposes was a crime
everywhere in the country. Pot prohibition was on. Today, four states
are setting up legal marketplaces open to anyone 21 or older.
Tightly
regulated private stores began popping up in Washington and Colorado in
2014; Alaska and Oregon plan to open stores in 2016. In the District,
voters approved legal pot possession in November and the law took effect
last month. And in November 2016, marijuana advocates expect to put
legalization on the ballot in at least five more states: California,
Nevada, Arizona, Massachusetts and Maine.
“I’ve been surprised at
how quickly things are moving. It’s just tremendous,” said Bill Piper,
national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance.
Marijuana clearly has momentum. For the first time,
a majority of Americans — 52 percent — favor pot legalization,
according to a recent poll by the well-regarded General Social Survey.
Last month, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) –
two likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination — said
legalization should be left to the states. And last week in the Senate, another potential GOP presidential contender, Rand Paul (Ky.),
joined Democrats Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) in introducing a
historic bill to end the federal ban on medical marijuana.
“It’s night and day from 2009,” said Dan Riffle, chief lobbyist for
the Marijuana Policy Project. He said doors on Capitol Hill once closed
to him are now swinging wide.
Still, even Riffle didn’t see the
Cannabis Corner coming — a store where pot is not only tolerated by the
government but promoted by it, like stamps, or maps, or Smokey Bear
tchotchkes.
“That’s something that would’ve been anathema six or seven years ago,” Riffle said.
In many places,
it still is.
In 38 states, possessing an ounce of marijuana continues to carry the
threat of jail time. Even in Washington, which in 2012 became one of the
first states to legalize pot for recreational use, the drug is not
universally embraced.
Of 281 incorporated municipalities, more
than 90 have banned the opening of pot shops or enacted moratoriums.
Officials in Pierce County are fighting a pot shop that opened last
month in the city of Parkland, despite a county ban on the
establishments. In Skamania County, home to North Bonneville, county
commissioner Chris Brong said he personally doesn’t approve of the
town’s decision.
“I don’t think it’s the type of business we want,” Brong said.
Fellow
commissioner Doug McKenzie agreed. At the very least, he said, Cannabis
Corner should have a private owner. “I don’t like government competing
with private enterprise,” McKenzie said.
A town upturned
North
Bonneville is no hippie haven. Initial thinking behind the shop was, in
fact, defensive: to deter a bad owner. But the town — a drab collection
of buildings thrown up in the 1970s when its 1,000 residents were
relocated to make way for the expansion of the nearby Bonneville Dam —
was struggling financially. The potential economic benefit was hard to
resist.
A pot shop would provide a reason for tourists to stop in
North Bonneville. Making it government-run would keep the profits
local.
Mayor Don Stevens pushed the idea. Stevens is 58, a former
Marine with wire-rim glasses, a beard and curly gray hair along the
sides of his head. As a teenager in 1970s Oregon, he joined the
pro-marijuana group NORML, believing that legalization was just around
the corner.
“Forty years later, it’s finally happening,” he said. “It’s been a long, strange trip, as they say.”
The
Cannabis Corner sits at the edge of town just off State Highway 14 in a
renovated storage barn. Red and white “Grand Opening” banners hang from
a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. State laws limit advertising,
so the store can be easy to miss.
Inside, it looks like a cross
between a head shop and a gift boutique. It’s clean and spaced out.
Classic rock plays quietly in the background. Long glass display cases
line two walls, arranged by marijuana breeds, stretching from indica
(calming) to sativa (energizing), with hybrids in between.
The
marijuana comes by the gram in prepackaged, sealed plastic bags, usually
$15 to $18 a pop — significantly less than at nearby private shops. Six
days after the store opened, its menu apologized that 13 varieties were
already “temporarily sold out!”
As three “bud tenders” helped
customers make their selections, Glen Jorgensen, 67, settled on some
Sour Diesel. The retired construction worker wore a gray T-shirt with an
American flag on it and carried a small brown bag with a Cannabis
Corner sticker bearing his purchase.
“There’s a lot of people my
age who’ve been getting it under the table for years,” said Jorgensen, a
Vietnam veteran who stopped by the store on his way back from the VA
hospital. “Now, we don’t have to.”
After lunch, business spiked.
In walked Levan Mattson, 23, with his parents, Daniel, 60, and Diana,
56. The family had been hiking nearby when Mom suggested they stop by
the pot shop.
The younger Mattson was stunned. He loved pot. But
he had never seen his parents get high. Now, his mom was perusing the
edible products. She settled on a cookie.
“It’s weird seeing this,” he said. “But it’s also kind of awesome.”
Mayor
Stevens dropped by the store in his new “I [pot leaf] Washington”
T-shirt. He had just attended a meeting of the county Chamber of
Commerce, where the Cannabis Corner was a new member.
Legun filled him in.
“I just placed our next re-up order,” she said. “We’re almost out of weed!”
The mayor beamed.
“How great is that?” he asked.
Will pot pay off?
Initially,
some residents opposed the pot shop. But the upset faded during a
regulatory approval process that took more than a year. The city could
not run the shop directly, so it set up a public development authority,
like the one that runs Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The five-member
board is responsible for business decisions and doling out store
profits. Stevens’s first priority is renovating the town’s dilapidated
playground.
But there is no promise of profitability. The
marijuana business is competitive. Pot stores have opened 45 minutes
away to the east and west. Just across the river gorge, Oregon could add
stores of its own next year. And North Bonneville must repay $260,000
in high-interest loans it borrowed to get the store started.
At a
meeting last week, development authority board members studied an early
sales report. The store was averaging about $2,200 a day — well below
initial projections. But board members felt confident that business
would pick up with the summer tourist season.
“As we get another
month or two under our belts, it’ll loosen up,” said John Spencer, a
consultant hired to develop the store’s business plan.
Legun cheered the group with the Cannabis Corner’s
first Yelp review: five stars. Then she brought up a potentially controversial topic: the employee discount program.
The
bud tenders — all regular government workers with benefits and starting
pay of $11 an hour — are a committed bunch. For instance, Kayley Blood,
25, left her job at a medicinal pot shop in Colorado to work at the
Cannabis Corner. The Colorado market was already feeling too
money-hungry and corporate, she said. She was attracted by the idea of a
small store run for the people.
Legun wanted to offer Blood and other employees
a steep discount. At the board meeting, she compared the Cannabis
Corner to any other retail operation, where it’s important to have
informed workers.
“We need to be doing constant trial and testing,” she argued.
One
board member did not want to give up the profits. The board’s attorney
worried that discounts might be considered gifts of government services.
In the end, the board voted to offer the staff marijuana and bongs at a
price just above cost.
At the Cannabis Corner, workers take the
same drug test the town administers to all new hires. But they’re
allowed — expected, actually — to test positive for marijuana.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Sen. Ted Cruz
represents Florida. He represents Texas. This version has been
corrected.
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