A Good Kind of Cannabis Store

I have been very cautious on cannabis product retailers near me, in Houston, where the legal cannabis market at the state-regulated level stinks. I am hoping that it gets better with the implementation of the program expansion that passed this month.

Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a medical cannabis program that will see the number of providers quintuple to 15 and that will expand the qualifying conditions too. It also has a wider range of products. The laws go into effect on 9/1. While Texas had a medical cannabis program already, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) did not include it. It made Texas the 40th state to be a medical cannabis state after the law was approved.

I am happy to see the potential improvement in the Texas Compassionate Use Program, which has just stunk. It has too few providers. Not surprisingly, it has a very small number of patients. The program was initially approved in 2015, and it was even worse. Originally, one had to have epilepsy to qualify, and the conditions were expanded after a few years. Still, after a decade, there are only 116K patients and just 861 physicians approved to prescribe low-THC cannabis through CUP, according to Texas data. Texas is a very large state, with 31.3 million residents. The patients in CUP represent only 0.4% of the population. Florida has nearly 4% of its residents.

I believe that cannabis should be more widely available everywhere. Of course, it needs to be inspected and its production needs to be regulated. So does its retailing. Whether it is for pleasure or for health, cannabis helps many people. It also can lead to gains in employment as the industry grows and returns for its investors. Finally, it can lead to tax revenue.

As I said earlier, I was a bit cautious on the retailers I was seeing in Houston. Too many of them were trying to sell anyone anything just to make a dollar. Many of these retailers were vaping stores that evolved from selling devices to product, and many were gas stations. Some were located very close to schools, and some were selling lots of THC, perhaps not even accurately gauging what they were selling. Not all of the products were even derived from hemp, as many were synthetic.

As negative as I was inherently, I had not actually been in a store. I was walking in my neighborhood, and I saw a store that had opened in a space where my barbershop had been, the Secret Library on West Gray. I had never heard of it, though this is the second location in Houston.

Feeling like I was going to be disappointed, I did walk in. A very nice person spoke to me, Toby, who worked in sales there. I liked the way he answered all of my questions, and I could see that they focus on carrying good products and don't break the law either. I found out that Secret Library is owned by Bahama Mama, which I had heard of before. Bahama Mama has about 100 stores in Texas now.

A couple of weeks later, I passed a Bahama Mama in the Heights on a walk, and I went in and spoke to the person who owns the franchise, Mohammed Chowdhury. When I began talking to him, I had no idea that he was part of the ownership.

When I visited, it looked like Texas was going to make the THC products illegal, and I asked what the store would do if that were the case. Chowdhury told me that they would have to change and sell only legal products.

Again, before the Abbott surprise veto, I visited Toby at Secret Library and had another good chat with him. I told him how IF it did not turn to law, I planned to open an educational website. We had a great second conversation that day.

So, there are a lot of lessons here. Perhaps the biggest one is to never prejudge! I was skeptical, but I listened and looked and learned. The second one is that people need to realize that there are some good retailers.

Bahama Mama and its subsidiary, Secret Library, are vape shops, but there are all sorts of other actual and potential retailers out there. The state-regulated cannabis industry has laws about who can walk into their stores, and the products are sold only there. Most American consumers prefer not to hand in their ID card when they enter a store, and most also like to shop for different things at the same time and not just cannabis products. The state-regulated cannabis companies pay a stupid tax, 280E, which is essentially a tax on gross profits rather than income and that leads to very high tax-rates.

Cannabis products derived from hemp do not cause 280E taxation. Further, they can be sold in all sorts of places, like Total Wine. Cannabis retail needs to be regulated better, but it can be awesome!