Who doesn’t love a town cleanup… especially when the local pot shop is handing out free weed in exchange for filling a few trash bags?
Dennis Meehan and his wife Tracy, both medical marijuana caregivers and owners of the Summit Medical Marijuana Shop in Gardiner, Maine, made the offer this past weekend, and the response was awesome.
“The night before, I was up all night putting together the bags. We had people, not just from Gardiner, but from all over the state,” Meehan said in a phone interview with High Times. “It was incredible.”
Meehan had announced the cleanup on the company’s Facebook page, in which he promised up to two grams of free weed for filling trash bags with garbage collected around the city.
Gardiner, population around 6,000, is popular with tourists and noted for its culture and old architecture.
Meehan said he never imagined how far the post would reach and even worried about being able to fill the demand. By the end of the week, the post had been shared hundreds of times and had tens of thousands of views.
Summit Medical Marijuana, Meehan told HT, is a family business.
Dennis and Tracy’s four children—aged 13 to 22—help out in the front of the store, a wellness shop open to all and with no signs of the cannabis business. He and his wife tend to medical marijuana in their office in the back.
Meehan got the idea for the cleanup/cannabis swap from a similar event held in Colorado. He said he’d like to see such activities take off across the country.
“It’s people working together and giving of their time on a hot and sunny day,” Meehan said. “A gram is a really small amount. People were doing it because they are caring individuals.”
Volunteers collected more than 100 over-sized trash bags resulting in hundreds of dollars of donated cannabis although Meehan wasn’t keeping track of the exact amount of product donated because his initiative was “not about money.”
“Gifting marijuana is something my family has been doing for years as caregivers,” Meehan said. “A big part of Maine’s marijuana program is making medicine available to people who otherwise may not have been able to afford it.”
“At the end of the day it isn’t about money,” he added. “It’s about the need. It’s about the community.”
While some in the area thought the pot giveaway was controversial, most saw it as a great idea.
Meehan informed city officials and police chief that the event was taking place.
He also reminded participants ahead of time not to use cannabis while they were in public collecting trash. Public use of recreational marijuana is still illegal.
“Gifting” and possession of marijuana is legal in Maine, while moratoriums remain in place for weed sales. Retail sales for recreational weed are expected to start by February 2018.
Meanwhile, Maine’s towns will be clean and tidy!
