The War on Drugs has been assaulted on many sides as a failure in terms of its impact on human lives and government spending. Despite polls finding that a majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana, and a spate of state regulations throughout the nation that allow for marijuana to be sold as a medicinal product, the Obama administration has so far been steadfast in its opposition to lifting the weed prohibition.
In response to the free citizens of Washington and Colorado voting to legalize recreational use of marijuana by adults, federal authorities may or may not swoop in and crush the country’s fledgling networks of marijuana producers and suppliers. In the meantime, storefront cannabis clinics have popped up like, well, like weeds.
There is not a single person working in the TakePart offices who doesn’t pass at least half a dozen medical marijuana dispensaries on the commute to work. A few TakePart associates will speak up about living next door to pot prescription stations, but no one will admit to having ventured inside those green, windowless doors.
Still, we all at some level seem to be curious about what goes on in there.
How is the product displayed? What do the practitioners look like? Are the patients actual ill people or malingering stoners? Is the activity conducted behind the staid but unmistakably cannabinoid facades so nefarious as to warrant national Drug Enforcement Administration taskforces to shut it down?
On the theory that the TakePart offices are much like any other office in the land (and the knowledge that most Internet consumption occurs in the office), we present this gallery of photos that venture deep inside a medical marijuana dispensary.
In the photo above, Canna Pi medical dispensary chief executive and president Abigail Guthrie (2nd L) and her brother, vice president for operations Chris Guthrie (2nd R), and staff medical consultants Marcus Refuerzo (L) and Angel Martos stand among some of their medical marijuana products at their clinic in Seattle, Washington.
Click through and satisfy your curiosity.
Photo: Anthony Bolante/Reuters
