How legal weed is leaving the people and the culture behind.
Scene: a white-walled, hermetically sealed dispensary that looks less like a place to buy weed and more like a backdrop from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It smells faintly of ionized air conditioning and plastic. Sleek iPads, LED mood lighting, and a curated playlist engineered to keep you calm enough to tip.
Controlled.
Unthreatening.
Cannabis isn’t just a drug anymore (took long enough), and dispensaries aren’t just drug stores. They’re minimalist retail temples with $300 zips and brand copy straight out of an Organifi fever dream. Weed now comes in all shapes, sizes, modalities, and marketing languages.
Gummies for sleep.
Pre-rolls for mindfulness.
Tinctures for your inner child.
There’s something for everyone. But is there, really?
Because if modern weed culture truly is for everyone, why do I—a 20-year vet of the culture, with no arrest record, no tragic war story—feel like an alien in this showroom?
And more importantly: If I feel like a fish out of water, how does this place feel to someone who’s actually been through it?
The marginalized. The oppressed. The people who caught cases, and lost years. The ones who lit up to stay sane in an insane world. The ones who weren’t offered wellness, but had to create it out of necessity against systemic violence and criminalization.
Can you gentrify a plant the same way you gentrify a block?
Can you sand down the rough edges, remove the politics, and bleach the history without rewriting or simply ignoring it?
Because it sure as hell feels like you can.
And worse—it kinda feels like we already did.
Before Wellness, There Was Rebellion
For decades, cannabis lived in the margins. It showed up where it was needed.
Quietly.
…
Read More
Author: Lucas Indrikovs / High Times
