What better way to celebrate
Independence Day than by combining community marketplaces with the
slowly (begrudgingly) ending drug war? On Independence Day weekend
(July 4-6), what is being called the first medical marijuana
farmer’s market in Los Angeles will give users the chance to ask
growers and vendors about their products without having to go
through dispensaries. It will take place at a dispensary, though,
in East Los Angeles, and the organizers are expecting between 25
and 50 different vendors.
From the LAist:
Executive Director Paizley Bradbury says the market’s ultimate
goal is to help educate patients as to what medication is available
to them.“For a long time, the only access patients had, especially in
L.A., was to go to a dispensary,” she told LAist. “We see a lot of
problems with having that power over patients’ access to medicine
whether that be price or vendors and who they choose. I feel like a
lot of the power should be shifted to those who are actually
growing so that first-time patients can talk to the growers and the
growers can cut out the broker price.”Bradbury also sees the market as an opportunity for smaller
vendors without the resources to advertise to meet future patients
in person, and for patients to learn about growing themselves.
It could also be a potential way to deal with the city’s
insistence on
trying to shut down hundreds of pot dispensaries other than the
few that are covered under a local ballot initiative passed last
year. The medical marijuana industry is not immune to protectionist
tendencies (especially since unions have gotten involved), and
concepts like farmer’s markets will help provide additional
options.
Reason magazine columnist Greg Beato noted in the
January issue that the “failure” of California to establish a
strict set of rules for medical marijuana sales has resulted in all
sorts of interesting consumer-oriented experiments on testing,
labeling, and marketing. Read what he had to say
here.
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