For some Los Angeles residents, the 4th of July weekend will be a chance to stock up on marijuana.
Patients eligible to use medical marijuana will be able to buy the drug directly from growers at a pot-centric farmers market. The California Heritage Market, which will feature 50 vendors, is open to any card-carrying medical marijuana patient in California.
“It will provide patients access to growers face to face,” said executive director Paizley Bradbury.
The market will be held in an enclosed outdoor area at West Coast Collective, a medical marijuana dispensary in Boyle Heights. Bradbury said organizers will check ID to verify that shoppers can buy marijuana before allowing them to enter.
The vendors have also been screened to ensure the market doesn’t “just let anybody come off the street.”
“A lot of people have been contacting me and saying, how are you doing this?” Bradbury said. “This is the legal way. This is what the laws are allowing us to do.”
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Bradbury said the West Coast Collective decided to host the market out of frustration that the medical marijuana industry, especially in Los Angeles, has strayed from its original purpose of providing medicine to patients.
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“Dispensary owners purchase medicine from growers and have created this market where their patients have no idea where their medicine is coming from,” she said.
She added that the city needs to do more to regulate growers and dispensaries, which she said often raise prices and give false information to patients. The farmers market, she said, will bring medical marijuana “back to its roots.”
A website for the event says the market "virtually guarantees that fresh medicine will be abundant and affordable."affordable.
The market, which also features food and games, will be held on July 4, 5 and 6 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the West Coast Collective.
