Discussing your relationship with cannabis can be a dicey move—there’s still a stigma. If you bring it up around the wrong friend or co-worker or family member, you can instantly become a litany of things: lazy or sketchy or criminal. So how do you change that? There’s no overnight remedy, but MedMen, a California-based cannabis company with dispensaries in six states, is leading the long PR battle on behalf of marijuana.

MedMen wants to make it clear: It is not your dad's Cheech and Chong dealer. Its goal is take all those tired notions about marijuana—the laziness and the sketchiness and the criminality—and revamp them. Its dispensaries are cleaner than most grocery stores. The walls, bright red and white, come to life as halo-lighting bounces off their glossy sheens. After showing your ID at the door, you’re greeted by a line of identical, glass-topped stations with tablets. In short, you’ve entered a pristine, candy cane-striped wonderland. Fittingly, the company has referred to itself as the "Apple Store of Weed" on several occasions. Other publications have dubbed it the "[Insert Desirable Brand] of Cannabis"—including the "Starbucks of Pot" and the "Barneys of Weed." MedMen's color scheme, its newly announced clothing line, and its Millennial appeal all scream, "Cannabis isn't something to fear."

On the business side, MedMen's recent acquisition of PharmaCann, another cannabis company, stands to change the fiscal apprehension some have about the cannabis market. But the young company is also facing a handful of lawsuits this year seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. MedMen might be charging forward, but the path to cannabis normalization is proving to be just as messy as it is invigorating.

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On display at MedMen's Manhattan venue, which opened last April to dispense medical marijuana, are vape pens and tinctures and capsules, all available if you have the right card. Nothing inside tracks with the stereotype of what a dispensary is "supposed" to be. It feels less like a bar and more like a pharmacy. The product isn't out in the open for you to thumb through, and there's a comfort in inaccessibility. The set-up calls back to that age-old parent explanation: We're doing this to protect you.

"In the past, a budtender would have half a mason jar full of cannabis, and they’d shove it in your face and say ‘smell this,'" says Andrew Modlin, co-founder and president of MedMen. "And you’d touch it, and if you liked it or not, you’d buy it. No gloves, no hygiene whatsoever. That bothered me." That, to be frank, does sound gross. Taking a big breath in at a MedMen store, you'll expect to smell pot, but in reality, it's just a normal, un-alarming scent.

MedMen's color scheme, its newly announced clothing line, and its Millennial appeal all scream, "Cannabis isn't something to fear."

MedMen created a space that isn't intimidating. To enter the Manhattan shop (and most of MedMen's other locations) all you need is a 21-and-over ID. From there, you can browse the company’s catalogue on tablets, educating yourself on CBD and THC, what different doses can offer, and which strain might suit you best. Those tablets put the power in customers' hands. "We don’t expect everyone who comes in to purchase it the first time," Modlin explains. "We expect them to come into the store and talk to a sales associate and learn about the products and learn about what’s going on. That’s our mission: for people to experience it and understand it."

But while product perception gets a face lift, MedMen is coming up against its first big setbacks. Last month, MedMen's former chief financial officer filed a lawsuit against the company alleging breach of contract and accusing co-founder and CEO Adam Bierman of making racist and homophobic comments, among other complaints. New York Daily News reported that the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association, a medical marijuana trade group, is distancing itself from MedMen due to the alleged discrimination.



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MedMen did not respond with a comment on the lawsuit, but Bierman has denied the allegations and MedMen's board of directors released a statement supporting its co-founders, Marijuana Business Daily reports. MedMen is also facing two other lawsuits this year: one from an early investor group claiming MedMen execs sought to enrich themselves, and another from former employees alleging labor law violations in a potential class action suit.

These lawsuits come at an incredibly important time for MedMen. When the joining of PharmaCann and MedMen is complete, the little company with a sanitary dream will operate 76 stores across 12 states, expanding further into the recreational marijuana space where it's legal. The acquisition will ultimately make MedMen the biggest publicly traded cannabis company in America, and stands to help the company's stocks skyrocket.



MedMen’s co-founders, Adam Bierman and Andrew Modlin MedMen

Though the future looks cautiously optimistic for national legalization, and thus MedMen’s expansion, one of Modlin’s fondest memories comes from MedMen's earlier stages, when its West Hollywood dispensary began serving everyday Californians after California legalized weed. "I remember standing in the processing room window behind the glass watching people come in,” Modlin says. "The reaction was so different from other stores I had built, where it was more of an old-school, shady kind of feeling. And at that point it was a revelation of the variety of people coming in—it wasn’t just this 'stoner type.'"



MedMen's dream is to elevate the experience behind bud, but what that means for consumers is still a mystery. Are brands like Barneys and Apple the target for people who regularly consume weed, or will MedMen be a catalyst causing a divide between those who are curious and those who are longtime users? Perhaps MedMen's vision turns into reality, and the retail cannabis space becomes as normalized as buying a six pack.

The longer you shop in a MedMen Manhattan outpost, the more the red and white color scheme starts resonating with you: It's reminiscent of the Red Cross. The Red Cross offers medical relief to those who need it, and MedMen's medical marijuana dispensary wants you to feel safe, too. After decades of stigma and stymied growth, MedMen might be key to an industry that is finally getting the opportunity to thrive. It just has to make sure it can thrive on its own, first.

Justin Kirkland Justin Kirkland is a writer for Esquire, where he focuses on entertainment, television, and pop culture.

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