The first day of legal weed sales in Rhode Island Thursday was, well, mellow – punctuated by a 96-year-old war veteran buying a pot cookie to have with his coffee and a state senator picking up some cannabis-infused stocking-stuffers for friends.
Absent at the five medical marijuana dispensaries that turned attention to recreational-use sales for the first time were any reports of long lines or traffic snarls like those that greeted the openings of the first pot shops in Massachusetts in 2018.
Back then, no other Northeast state had recreational sales, and the novelty drew wide attention. Today only New Hampshire remains without an adult-use program. And Rhode Island marijuana users have been buying all the pot they want for years at the many Massachusetts stores situated along the border.
Still, the morning wasn’t without some last-minute jockeying among the dispensaries to see which would host that first Rhode Island recreational sale.
After reading in The Journal Wednesday that RISE of Warwick planned a 5:45 a.m. ribbon cutting, Joseph Pakuris, co-owner of Mother Earth Wellness in Pawtucket, said he called upon one of his marijuana suppliers, Karen Ballou, to get to his Pawtucket dispensary before then.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
Website
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Comment *
Notify me of follow-up comments by email.
Notify me of new posts by email.
Δ
Recreational marijuana has been legal in Ohio for more than three months, but many public employers are not changing their policies and still prohibit workers from consuming the drug in…
When the state of Minnesota legalized adult-use cannabis last year, legislators made a subtle change to the books: they struck most mentions of “marijuana” and swapped it out for “cannabis.”…
Salisbury, Massachusetts-based Root & Bloom is a locally and independently owned producer of quality cannabis products whose relatively recent entrance into a quickly maturing Massachusetts market has resulted in a…
Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a review of the way New York State licenses cannabis businesses after calling the sluggish rollout of legal cannabis a “disaster.” Gov. Kathy Hochul has told…