A Maplewood business owner hopes to become a medical marijuana dispensary when it becomes possible, KSDK has reported. Voters approved the sale of medical marijuana in November.
Kelly Christensen has been in business about a year selling hemp products at Canvas Boutique and Dispensary in Maplewood, in the 7100 block of Manchester.
Many of her products contain CBD — or Cannabidiol; it comes from the hemp plant, a close relative to marijuana. Both plants contain Cannabinoids, but marijuana is high THC, while hemp is rich in CBD.
“Business has been awesome. We have so many repeat customers that have been getting a really great response just by helping the with pain and anxiety,” Kelly told KSDK.
She said she talked with the Maplewood mayor a year ago to tell him she’s interested in becoming a dispensary.
The application process starts in January 2019.
The medical benefits of marijuana are well documented.
I’m listening to a fascinating podcast about the era of prohibition and how, after the 18th amendment became law and illegal activities around the production and distribution alcohol started to ramp up, doctors started to prescribe alcohol to cure all sorts of ailments without much evidence of its efficacy. The practice was later limited in scope through regulations but never completely eradicated. Now, the case for medical marijuana is being debated and there is evidence of actual benefit that led to recommendations for marijuana for medical use (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3628147/). But it’s interesting on the surface to see certain parallels between the introduction of alcohol back into regular use and the uprise of marijuana through medical dispensaries and legalization for medical use. For those familiar with Joe Rogan’s podcast, if you listen to some of the early podcast you know that he and his friends often got access to medical marijuana through prescriptions that were fairly easy to obtain. That was before California started to legalize outright use. Pain or suffering can easily be attributed to many people and so alcohol in those days was prescribed all the time, which is why the government wanted to limit it’s quantities. I’m not making the same case for marijuana but it is interesting.