When most people talk or think about legal marijuana, their minds jump straight to the stores that sell these products. For those who detest the idea of marijuana use in any of its forms, these locations seem like a haven for the wrong crowd. However, a closer look at marijuana dispensaries shows us just how wrong these perceptions can be.
A Look at Reputable Retailers
Tamarack Dispensaries is an Alberta area provider of medical marijuana products, including cannabis oil, therapeutic edibles and more. By providing a safe place for patients to shop for items intended solely for medicinal use, locations like these help to destigmatize the drug for everyone. As more and more people legally secure their products from these dispensaries and benefit from their usage, more doctors, therapists and common folk are seeing just how little there is to be afraid of with medicinal applications of this one-time street drug.
Still a Problem in Some Areas
This isn’t to say that marijuana isn’t still being used incorrectly or abused. Just as any prescription medication has the tendency to end up on the streets for illicit sale, so too will marijuana, whether it is legally available or not. Underage users use cigarettes and other tobacco products illegally every day, and millions of people die from alcohol use or abuse or drunk driving accidents annually. None of this has kept people from continuing to use these products as directed, and so should the potential for abuse not harm the crusade for legal marijuana.
At the end of the day, people are going to use drugs, alcohol and other substances incorrectly if they want to. There is little that governments can do – other than what is already being done with regulation, age restrictions and limited access to specific groups of individuals – to prevent this. What we can do as a society is educate people on the proper, medicinal use of marijuana and cannabis-derived substances so that they can be utilized in ways that optimize results and help patients to continue recovery. Hopefully – eventually – the rest of the world will catch up.
