Dispensary Shoppers Wonder Where the House Flower Went | Westword
Navigation

Ask a Stoner: What Happened to In-House Weed?

Finding dispensaries around Denver with great house weed isn't hard, but growing cannabis and retail sales are more separated than ever before.
Cartoon pothead smokes
Westword
Share this:
Carbonatix Pre-Player Loader

Audio By Carbonatix

Dear Stoner: What happened to in-house weed? I went to a dispensary for the first time in a while, and all the budtender wanted to show me were these branded jars. He said most stores don't grow their own anymore.
Gervis

Dear Gervis: I'd estimate that more dispensaries grow their own than don't, and most wholesale weed is still sold deli style. However, the way we get our flower has certainly changed. State laws in the early days of recreational pot used to force dispensaries to grow the majority of cannabis they sold. Those rules ended years ago, but it has taken a while for old habits to change. Without those vertical integration rules today, though, we're seeing more businesses do what they excel at: Growers can be growers, and retailers can be retailers.
click to enlarge An open jar of cannabis inside of a dispensary
Finding dispensaries around Denver with great house weed isn't hard, but growing cannabis and retail sales are more separated than ever before.
Scott Lentz
The more modern way of doing this saves us from shit-tier dispensary cultivations (though there are plenty of those left) while also enabling more underground growers to transition into the legal market. Finding dispensaries around Denver with great house weed isn't hard — there's Higher Grade, KrystaLeaves, L'Eagle and Verde Natural, to name a few — but the two lanes are more separated than ever before.

Send questions to [email protected].
BEFORE YOU GO...
Can you help us continue to share our stories? Since the beginning, Westword has been defined as the free, independent voice of Denver — and we'd like to keep it that way. Our members allow us to continue offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food, and culture with no paywalls.