Pubdate: Fri, 31 Jan 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold

Medical, Recreational Marijuana Shops

BACKS OF OPERATORS CAN BE AGAINST A WALL

As walls go, Greg Gamet's is a monster. It cost Gamet and his 
partners-owners of the Dank Colorado marijuana store in Denver- about 
$80,000 in renovations to put up. There were extra permits and 
inspections involved. And it all had to be done on a rushed schedule 
so that Dank Colorado could be among the nation's first licensed 
recreational marijuana stores to open Jan. 1.

But Gamet said the ordeal was worth it because the wall keeps 
separate the two hemispheres of his shop's world: the recreational 
marijuana side and the medical marijuana side.

"The product is similar," Gamet said, "but other than that, they're 
two completely different businesses."

Given the costs and headaches, though, it's little wonder that most 
shops aren't following Dank's lead.

Almost all of the medical marijuana businesses in Colorado that have 
applied to open recreational shops chose to hang on to their medical 
sides, as well. Only four out of the 171 stores that have either 
applied to open or are already licensed by the state for recreational 
sales made a full conversion, according to state figures.

Those stores that kept both recreational and medical marijuana sides 
faced a problem. Recreational pot shops can sell only to people 21 
and over. But medical marijuana dispensaries can serve younger 
customers. If a store wants to keep selling to under-21 medical 
marijuana patients, state law requires it to build a wall between the 
two sides and give them separate entrances.

In Denver, businesses that do so are known as "co-located" stores, 
and they make up the minority of shops that have applied with the 
city for recreational sales. Only 28 of the 117 stores that have 
applied in Denver intend to build a wall, according to the city.

The other 89 are what the city calls "co-terminus" stores, meaning 
they sell both medical and recreational marijuana in the same space 
and all customers - including medical marijuana patients - have to be 
at least 21.

Industry advocates say stores putting up walls are finding it 
difficult. The construction costs, as well as the added permits and 
inspections, complicate what Mike Elliott, the executive director of 
the Marijuana Industry Group, said is already a complicated process.

"It's already challenging enough to open the business for 
recreational sales without doing that," he said.

What the walls buy for the stores is the ability to serve a tiny 
slice of Colorado's medical marijuana market. Less than 5 percent of 
Colorado's medical marijuana patients are under 21, according to 
state Health Department statistics. The average age of the state's 
roughly 110,000 medical marijuana patients is 42.

But Gamet said the wall keeps the culture of the different businesses 
separate, too. While the recreational side of Dank Colorado has seen 
heavy traffic and quick turnaround, Gamet said customers on the 
medical side generally prefer to take their time when making 
purchases and discuss the properties of different marijuana strains.

"It's more of an intimate environment," he said. "We built our 
business on medical marijuana. So for us to be able to service our 
medical patients effectively, they needed a separate entrance."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom