Maine’s largest medical marijuana retailer, Wellness Connection, is currently converting its South Portland store from a medical marijuana dispensary to a recreational marijuana retailer.
It’s also beginning the process of changing its name to HighNorth Maine Cannabis.
Managing Director Charlie Langston spoke with Morning Edition host Irwin Gratz about these transitions.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Gratz: First of all, what is this change is going to mean for the South Portland store?
Langston: There’s not much change other than you don’t need a medical card to get in.
Was it always the plan at some point to shift one or more of your locations to the retail market?
The plan was always to be able to provide cannabis to everybody who wants it. What happened is the law that we passed prohibited you from having both medical and adult use in the same storefront. So essentially, that law made the decision for us. Otherwise, you’d have to duplicate all of your stores and all of the systems, and that really made it untenable.
Does this mean that eventually your other three locations will be converted as well?
Eventually yes. That’s a process that takes awhile due to the licensing. And also because, before we switch them all, we want to be sure we have all of our products that we carry in medical available in the adult-use market.
Can you talk a little…