Columbia’s first CBD ‘dispensary’ to open in Five Points. Is medical marijuana next?
Columbia’s first CBD “dispensary” is set to open in Five Points on Monday. And the medical-style cannabidiol shop is readying for potential transition to a medical marijuana dispensary.
Charlotte CBD shop is located in the old American Apparel and Copper Penny space at 610 Harden St. It plans to have a soft opening Friday, with its doors officially opening Monday.
“We’ll see who wanders in,” Charlotte CBD co-owner Mike Sims said.
A grand opening will be held the weekend of June 22, he said, complete with food, music, educational programs. Law enforcement will be invited to the event, Sims said.
“We want to teach people about the plant” — meaning cannabis, he said. “We are trying to change the stigma.”
Sims and his partners opened a shop in Charlotte in October and plan to open another in Mooresville, N.C. They are modeled on medical marijuana dispensaries in westerns states where the drug is legal.
“We are definitely positioning ourselves to be medical marijuana dispensary,” he said.
CBD derived from hemp, marijuana’s non-psychoactive cousin, is legal in South Carolina. A bill called the Compassionate Care Act, which would legalize marijuana derivatives for medical purposes, is presently before the S.C. Senate Medical Affairs Committee.
It could face a full vote of the Senate next year.
CBD products — from creams to oils to edibles — can be purchased by anyone, of any age, anywhere, from gas stations to grocery stores to dedicated brick-and-mortar CBD shops.
Charlotte CBD differs from other CBD shops, Sims said, in that customers, or “clients,” are greeted by a medical-style lobby. They must be over 18 years old, show identification and register.
They are then taken for one-on-one consultations, and their purchases are logged and evaluated for their effectiveness.
“It’s about accountability,” Sims said.
But won’t people buy products from stores where they don’t have to fill out paperwork?
“It’s been quite the opposite,” Sims said. “It helps our credibility. It put us over the top in Charlotte.”
Charlotte CBD also plans seminars and other educational programs to promote what many people believe are the health effects of cannabis derivatives.
“We believe in the plant as a whole,” Sims said, noting that cannabis contains 85 to 114 compounds that may have therapeutic qualities. “And we know they are very important to human health. We want to be advocates.”
This story was originally published May 30, 2019 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Columbia’s first CBD ‘dispensary’ to open in Five Points. Is medical marijuana next?."