Inside DC’s Recreational Weed Market: It’s Absurdly Confusing

, is a clean, comfy place just steps away from the DCUSA shopping center in Columbia Heights. Walk inside and you’ll find a box for a coat drive, a sofa in front of a picture wall, and artwork that salutes powerful women such as Frida Kahlo and Princess Diana—Alvarez really wants women to feel at ease in her shop. There are sharp-looking displays of cleaning supplies and cannabis paraphernalia including $30 basic glass pipes and $300 hand-blown bongs.

When Alvarez’s friend decided to exit the business, she gathered her life savings, borrowed money from her family, and bought him out. Customers began asking her to carry cannabis products, and with Anthony about to start college at Clark University in Massachusetts, she decided to test the waters with a basket of THC-laced brownies—displayed by the register in a basket labeled “ANT’s College Fund Brownies.” Alvarez’s mom reluctantly helped her develop the recipe.

Then there’s the matter of product quality—and safety. DC’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, which oversees the city’s seven medical dispensaries, has for years been willing to license an independent local laboratory to test the products those dispensaries sell. However, only one lab has ever applied, and it didn’t meet the agency’s requirements.

By sheer accident, the legal uncertainty surrounding the District’s recreational market has made it more equitable, scaring off large multistate companies and allowing smaller local operators to establish themselves. Similarly, minority entrepreneurs and people with criminal records can more easily get into the cannabis game here than in states like Nevada and Massachusetts.

It used to be really wild west like, I'd call up and order & go meet someone with my weed outside of Trader Joe's & there'd always be a line of folks waiting too. Now I can just grow my own, so much better.

You know how if you want a bottle of vodka, you can just walk into a liquor store, pay for one, and walk out? Washington’s cannabis industry works nothing like that.

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