A Pot Shop Where It Should Be: On a Busy Street

The Apothecary, a medical-marijuana dispensary that occupies a former tanning salon on Broadway, has picked up four to six new patients per day since it opened on March 10, says proprietor Cass Stewart. It's the only pot shop in Capitol Hill. "This is a fantastic location," he says. Lots of new clients "live around the corner," including a woman with HIV who was sick of traveling to dispensaries in south Seattle, Stewart says, which shows that the neighborhood was in need.

While I was in for a few minutes this afternoon, three patients showed up (each with a marijuana authorization signed by a medical professional on tamper-proof paper) and two were making their first visit.



"The best strain right now is called 'Papa's Candy,'" Stewart says. What's makes it the best? "The cosmetic of it—just beautifully grown, beautifully manicured, beautifully cured." It goes for $13 a gram.

Stewart says he wasn't expecting so much attention right out of the gate—KIRO television and KOMO news radio have both stopped by recently—but he should have. The Apothecary is doing something unusual and wonderful: Opening up shop in the middle of town.

As I reported back in December, the recent boom of dispensaries have operated in a legal gray area (more illegal than legal, IMO) and have tucked themselves largely into the most secluded corners of industrial lands. Not only hard to find for patients or visit by public transit, these out-of-the-way pot shops are extremely vulnerable to robbery.

As Jane Jacobs's authoritative book on contemporary urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, reminds us from beginning to end, few variables make a place safer than eyes on the street. Just like bars and homes and pharmacies, medical marijuana dispensaries are safer in busy areas—the patients, providers, the cops—than as sitting ducks in a no-man's land.



This is the "Papa's Candy." But a pro-tip for medical marijuana folks who want to be taken seriously as medical providers, don't give pot silly names that call a drug "candy."

Paradoxically, granting legal protection to dispensaries could push them further off the main drags. SB 5073, a bill to formally license these currently nefarious dispensaries, is moving quickly through the state legislature this month. The bill, to its credit, says no dispensary can open within 500 feet of a school or another dispensary. But it would also allow cities to assign zoning regulations on where places like the Apothecary can open for business. Zoning regulations are useful and I support them. However, local lawmakers may be tempted—as lawmakers have tried to do in other states—to sequester them in industrial lands and low-density areas. Assuming the bill passes, I hope that Seattle officials think carefully about common sense urban planning and don't push these businesses (essentially pharmacies or retail fronts) to the edge of the city.

"I think that for the security and safety of the community, it's better to be in a more visible place," says Stewart. "The problem in the past is that people would hide in the shadows. I would be more worried about getting robbed if we were tucked away on a back street."