When I first started working here, this locale had the look and believe of a pharmacy.
At that time the pot laws were legitimately restrictive in this state.
In order to have legal access to medical cannabis, a person first had to get a written recommendation from their primary care physician. Once that was acquired it had to be taken to a government office for approval. There was a long, strenuous vetting process that took many weeks, which meant that only the oldest and sickest people ever qualified for medical cannabis. There were some mornings that my cannabis shop would only have many or many shoppers in a morning. Times sure have changed! Now recreational cannabis use is legal, which means anyone over the age of 21 with a state issued ID can come to the store and buy weed. In the old mornings most of my task was filing paperwork, and logging the medical cannabis Rx permits the state issued to shoppers, and currently the store has dozens of shoppers a morning, and occasionally there is a long line of shoppers waiting in front of the cannabis dispensary when the two of us open! Although I stay tied up all morning long, I like it that way. I get to meet so many interesting people and spend the entire shift discussing the pros and cons of different cannabis strains. The cannabis dispensary no longer feels prefer a pharmacy, it seems prefer a cool locale to hang out. I prefer my task as a budtender more than ever, and have even started pondering the method of opening my own cannabis dispensary one morning.