Tuesday, October 27, 2020 8:48 AM
After a doorbuster opening day, Sweet Relief, the lone licensed adult-use cannabis shop operating in the midcoast, spent most of October closed for restocking. Owner Johnny Lorenz said the 230 pre-rolled joints available on October 9, the first day of legal, retail recreational cannabis sales, were gone by 4 p.m. the same day. He planned to reopen October 25 with enough stock to last several months.
Lorenz moved his caregiver shop on Route 1 in Northport to a renovated building on the same property to make room for his recreational business. Even with the lapse in the supply chain, he expressed optimism about the adult-use industry. But he said the rules make for a different experience for the customer than medical patients might be used to. The glass-front cabinets in his shop that once displayed apothecary jars filled with buds grown at his farm in Morrill now are stacked with shrink-wrapped cannisters, each containing ? ounce of buds grown by Cannabis Cured Cultivation. He likened them to pairs of high heels at Bergdorf Goodman, discrete objects for sale at non-negotiable prices. Gone are the bulk discounts and baker’s dozens common among marijuana growers — Lorenz’s motto at his caregiver shop is “Johnny’s 30-gram ounces.” On the positive side, he said, the industry makes high-quality, indoor-grown cannabis available to anyone over 21.
Cannabis Cured Cultivation, grower of the latest stock at Sweet Relief, is part of Maine Cannabis Campus, a vertically integrated company founded by Mark Crockett, whose early endeavors in Maine’s legal marijuana industry included several years spent at Peirce Elementary School in Belfast, where his bio at cannabiscampusme.com says he “took up residency and built a research facility.”
As of October 26, Sweet Relief still had the midcoast
market to itself. Several adult-use stores are in the process of getting state and local approval and opening shop,
including Highbrow Industries and Belvidere Farmacy,
both in Rockland, and Coastal Cannabis Company in Damariscotta.
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