On July 4th weekend, a group of southern California-rooted ganjapreneurs will celebrate their freedom by opening a marijuana farmers market in Los Angeles.
But is the California Heritage Market a greedy marketing ploy or legitimate patient outreach? The way organizer Paizley Bradbury tells it, the market — which requires a California medical marijuana license for entry at 1500 Esperanza St. in L.A. — could save customers time, money and headaches, given California’s current medical marijuana infrastructure.
“It’s going to be so much easier for patients to get their medicine at a more affordable rate, and something that they can trust,” Bradbury told Time magazine. “They can say ‘How did you grow this? Is it organic? What kind of nutrients did you use? What kind of strain is this?’ There’s just so much more behind it.”
If all goes as planned at the California Heritage Market, growers will bring their marijuana flowers and infused edibles to the market and sell them directly to customers — who can ask specific questions about the strains and growing conditions. The market’s products will theoretically be cheaper than dispensaries because they’ll be skipping the middle-men — brokers who transfer the product from cultivation facilities to medical marijuana shops.
But is this medical marijuana wonderland legal? Bradbury thinks so.
“With this industry,” Bradbury told Time, “you just never really know how things are going to turn out until after you do it.”