New Yorkers looking to buy marijuana in Manhattan can now make their purchases at the corner of 5th Avenue and East 39th Street.
Los Angeles-based cannabis retailer MedMen is launching its first dispensary in New York City on Friday—4/20—the industry’s biggest unofficial holiday. The Midtown location, just blocks from Bryant Park and the New York Public Library, will be open for on-site consultations with pharmacists to determine best-fit remedies for chronic pain and other ailments diagnosed by a doctor.
The company is opening the store despite the fact that legal weed is limited—cannabis is still largely prohibited in the state. The plant is allowed only for certain medical purposes and patients are restricted to purchasing just three kinds of products. Still, MedMen is betting a Manhattan storefront is worth a hefty price tag. The company spent $26 million to acquire a firm that had one of two licenses for a dispensary in Manhattan. It’s about setting the foundation for future growth, according to Daniel Yi, a MedMen spokesman.
“Maybe it’s not going to be huge business today,” he said, “but we’re making a statement that this belongs here.”
Cannabis is fully legal for adults in nine states and Washington, D.C., and it’s allowed for medical use in 20 more. The industry, which was about $6 billion in size as of 2016, is slated to hit $75 billion by 2030, according to investment bank Cowen & Co. Still, the plant remains federally illegal.
New York has yet to push beyond its medicinal program. Still, if neighboring states such as New Jersey and Connecticut go fully legal, many say it’s only a matter of time before New York follows suit. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy called for pot legalization in a speech in March.
Weed dispensary comes to NYC's 5th avenue, just in time for 4/20 https://t.co/pTRS34Oq4d pic.twitter.com/doI7Ur5JRV
— Bloomberg (@business) April 20, 2018
MedMen has already built dispensaries in other high-traffic areas, including on the border of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles and just off the Las Vegas Strip. The company also owns facilities for cultivation and manufacturing.
“The ability to go open on Fifth Avenue today and to be able to have the general public walking in the store and see what legal marijuana may look like is a major, major moment,” the company’s chief executive and co-founder, Adam Bierman, told reporters Wednesday at an event showcasing the new space.
As patients walk through the showroom’s doors, they’ll encounter modern minimalist light fixtures hanging from a Gothic-style arched ceiling. Wooden display tables with MedMen’s lines of pens, pills and drops—the three forms allowed in New York—cover the floor. Posters of the company’s campaign about pivoting the stereotype of marijuana users away from “stoner” accompany enlarged photos of cannabis facilities along the otherwise white walls.
It’s all a way to normalize the plant as the country edges ever-closer to ending federal prohibition, Yi said.
“We’re making a statement by putting a marijuana shop in one of the most iconic shopping centers in the world,” he said. “If we want to move into the future of regulated adult use of marijuana, we wanted to do it in an environment like this."
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
