By Cara Anderson
IG: @carajojo
Summit Medical Marijuana is a dispensary located in Gardiner, Maine, a historic riverside town. The owner of Summit MMJ, Dennis Meehan, put together an initiative to clean up his community. The dispensary offered free marijuana to community members that brought evidence of them cleaning up litter. Of course, the community members had to be medical card holders to acquire their free gram of weed.
Meehan stated that over one hundred bags of trash were turned in to the dispensary and that some people wouldn’t accept the free buds, they participated just for the solidarity of cleaning up the town.
Gardiner’s Chief of Police, James Toman, said that they saw no negative repercussions from Summit MMJ gifting the weed. There was no increase in crime. No surprise there.
As areas like Lemon Grove are crawling towards having dispensaries in their limits, it would be beautiful for a new dispensary to model this event. It’s important to prove to a transitioning community that dispensaries won’t be corrupting youths or defiling the streets. Most of us know that respect, responsibility, and giving back are integral parts of the cannabis community. For skeptical residents of towns/cities that will be opening their doors to dispensaries, community building motions of positive change could ease the blow of change.
