Storefront in Williams goes to pot

I’ll let the Williams-Grand Canyon News in the Route 66 town of Williams, Ariz., take the lead:

Despite vocal resistance from the public against the possibility of a local medical marijuana dispensary on Route 66, the Williams City Council voted unanimously to approve the facility Sept. 27.

Cannabis Research Group (CRG) now has the go ahead to open a dispensary at 341 East Route 66 in the old Poquette Realty building via conditional use permit.

Other nuggets from the story:

• Only folks with a medical marijuana card (I didn’t know they issued those) can use the dispensary. So the notion that tourists will walk in to do business seems very unlikely.
• About 60 registered medical marijuana users live in the Williams area, but a huge majority of the dispensary’s customers will be at a cancer facility in Scottsdale.
• When the state’s voters approved medical marijuana in 2010, “it became mandatory under state law to allow for dispensaries under city ordinances,” said the newspaper. So the council didn’t have a lot of leeway, nor were there many properties with the proper zoning.
• The marijuana won’t be grown locally.

It seems the concerns about safety and tourism are overheated. Those five-dozen locals who will use the dispensary aren’t going to toke up in the middle of the Mother Road. Even if a few did, DWI laws can deal with them.

And the stigma against marijuana is ebbing away. Within two decades or sooner, most states will allow prescribed pot. It will become harder to justify keeping marijuana illegal when a legal substance — alcohol — brings deeper societal and health costs.

Incidentally, this wouldn’t be the first medical marijuana dispensary on Route 66. One at the Arrowhead Lodge in Flagstaff was planned (it’s unknown whether it opened). A medical marijuana collective in California features Route 66 in its name. And a strain of pot is named after the Mother Road.

So it seems Route 66 is, ahem, getting around with pot users.

(Lest you think I’ve turned into a pot-smoking hippie due to this report, I’ve never smoked or consumed marijuana in my life. I grew up an adamant non-smoker, and never became interested in the wacky tobacky.)