Portland's Cannabis Cafe is not The First Medical Marijuana Coffee Shop in America

[Weedpipe]

On Friday the 13th NORML announced the opening, in Portland, of the first medical marijuana coffee shop in America. Since then this unforgivable error has been picked up by CBS 3, Examiner.com, Canada Free Press, Daily Finance, Money Times, Visit Bulgaria, The New York Times, Passport Magazine, Reuters, The Huffington Post, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times Online, and The AtlanticWire, to name just a few.

The Portland Cannabis Cafe is most definitely not the first medical marijuana coffee shop in America.

The mother ship was the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club which opened in 1995 at 1444 Market Street in San Francisco. But even that was not the first. Its predecessor was a smaller operation, also ran by Dennis Peron, at Church and Market in San Francisco. About 1995 Fred Seike and Scott Imler opened a medical marijuana club in Santa Cruz and in 1997 Steve McWilliams and Barbara McKenzie opened Shelter From The Storm in San Diego that was in operation at least 4 years.

The Marin Alliance is probably the oldest medical marijuana club in the country that is still operating, begun by Lynette Shaw after the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club was raided in 1996.

As of this writing the New York Times has changed the title of their article and added the following note:

This post was corrected after its initial publication to make clear that the statement in other reports, that this cafe was the nation's first to allow marijuana use, was incorrect.

Unlike NORML's club, The San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club did not charge a membership fee or a use fee or require anyone to be a member of anything, except (of course) the club. Membership was free to anyone with a valid recommendation from a doctor, and cards were issued to members. You had to have a card to get in.

Patients purchased cannabis on two floors at a counter. One floor was for sativa, the other for indica. Both floors had lounge areas of various types, and there was entertainment space as well. Medicating on the premises was not just allowed but encouraged. There were 5 floors in all, with intake and the offices of Proposition 215 on the ground floor, the backroom and club office on the 2nd floor, indica on the 3rd floor, and sativa on the 4th floor.

It should be noted that on November 3rd, KDRV TV in Oregon reported the Portland Cannabis Cafe was the second medical marijuana club in that city - that another club had opened a month previous.



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Website:Portland's Cannabis Cafe is not the first medical marijuana coffee shop in America

 

[BillyKincaid]

Re: Portland's Cannabis Cafe is not The First Medical Marijuana Coffee Shop in Americ

"Sadly, the Portland Cannabis Cafe is closed."

All things considered, the Portland Cannabis Cafe was a lovely institution, but with flaws.
The types of errors that occur in a new business - the petty power struggles, the menu problems - along with the apparent "fear of selling Cannabis" by the cafe owners and their legal advisors, which now appears unjustified considering the success of "Sophia's Registry" right across town here in 'Potland, could have all been factors which led to the Cannabis Cafe closing it's doors.

That's right, it's closed. But the real question is "Why did it close?"

The Cafe WAS a Registry of medical canabis patients, care givers and growers, that in the opinion of this writer should have been allowed to sell Cannabis "to it's members." But it's almost as though the proprietors of the Cafe didn't understand that it was in fact a Registry. There were also no medibles in the Cannabis Cafe for sale, which I understand was due to a concern that the amount of THC was possibly inexact in medibles from a liability standpoint.

Were we simply too afraid, to have a real Amsterdam style Cafe? Isn't that what everyone really wanted?

I don't blame the pioneers who opened the Portland Cannabis Cafe for their caution. The two men I saw who did most of the work on the cannabis side of the Cafe - "R.A.M. Junior " and "Frog" - were dedicated, knowledgeable and friendly. Sadly some serious mistakes were made. I know that a long time patient and member of the Cannabis Scene in Portland was treated unfairly.
She is a disabled woman and medical cannabis patient who ran afoul of Madeline in an unrelated matter, and who was not allowed to enter the Cafe through the first floor "handicapped entrance", even though she met all of the state and federal standards for being permanently handicapped, presented letters from her physician and her attorney and had an acutely broken foot. That was a rather shameful incident, which I am sorry to say I witnessed first hand.

The Portland Cannabis Cafe is now closed.
How could it close? Was the rent too high? Was the fact that no cannabis was available for sale off putting, to some? Were the financial managers inexperienced at running a restaurant? I do not know the answer.
I feel that it is a sad event that the Cafe closed. it was exactly the sort of space the patients , growers and caregivers of NOTML needed. Where were the lawyers, and the CPAs? How and why did NORMLs Portland Cannabis Cafe end up closed just six months after it opened it's doors? I don't know. All I know is that it was a great place to party with other medical cannabis patients, caregivers and growers. Perhaps the next time a Cannabis Cafe opens in Orygun, it will be an actual "Cannabis Cafe" that legally sells cannabis to card carrying patients at sufficient profit to keep it's doors open. In fairess, I should add that the Cannabis Cafe did provide donated cannabis bud to smoke free of charge in small amounts for on premise consumption only, and that the Cafe was truly a "Vapor Bar", with vaporized bud and sometimes hash oil available all day and evening to cafe patrons.

I miss the 'Potland Cannabis Cafe. I'm betting that many other people do too. I'd like to thank "Linda from the Oregon NORML Board," "R.A.M. II", and "Frog" for all of the good work they did in keeping the Cafe open for as long as it was. I wish them all good luck in the future. :ban: