Cheers and the undeniable smell of marijuana flower filled the inside of the historic bank building in Brookline where NETA welcomed the first adult recreational users to purchase legal pot in the Greater Boston area Saturday morning.

Neil Wishinsky, the chairman of the Brookline Board of Selectmen, made the first purchase picking lumens, a chewy edible product, and “nuggets.”

“It was a little daunting,” he said, while holding up his purchase in a white paper bag before a pack of reporters.

Of his new products he said: “I guess at some point I’ll find out what these are.”

Less intimidated was James Jenner, 38 of Salem. He arrived at the Brookline facility at 5 a.m. and got in line at about 6 a.m. He was the first person let into the store, after Wishinsky’s ceremonial purchase.

“This is a big deal,” said Jenner, who grew up in Brighton. “It’s got that hometown kind of feel.”

Jenner, who said he has diabetes and anxiety, uses marijuana medicinally, he said, but was hesitant to sign up for a medical card. He did not want to be part of a database, he said. On Saturday he bought a vape pen.

“The sky's the limit,” he declared, while wrapped in a poncho in the wind outside the shop.

The second person in line was 72-year-old Tom Sullivan. Sullivan is a Lyft driver and hopes smoking marijuana will help calm him nerves after his shifts.

“By the time I get home from my shift I’m a nervous wreck,” Sullivan, of West Roxbury, said. “So I’m hoping this will be a little reward after a shift, to have a little marijuana.”

Sullivan said he’s been “waiting patiently all these years” for marijuana to become legal for recreational use. Sullivan said he’s smoked pot twice before in 2007 but was unimpressed.

“When I smoked the first time I was expecting more from it then I got,” he said.

He bought a Rubi vape pen, which he thinks will be more potent.

Sullivan said he’s been “waiting patiently all these years” for marijuana to become legal for recreational use.

In 2016, Massachusetts residents voted to legalize recreational marijuana. The first shops - in Northampton and Leicester - didn’t open until the end of 2018 after a rigorous vetting process by the state’s Cannabis Control Commission.

NETA in Brookline is the 13th legal marijuana store to open in Massachusetts. It is the first in the Greater Boston area, and the only shop to be accessible by the MBTA.

The next closest store to Boston, Alternative Therapies Group in Salem, has suspended recreational sales due to a problem uploading their inventory into the state tracking system.