Etiquette for patients

Miss Manners hasn’t yet written a handbook about it, so we asked local budtenders and patients for their opinions about correct behavior once inside a dispensary. Here’s what they had to say:

Don’t call to ask prices.

“We will gladly tell you if we have a product in stock,” says Shayna, a Sacramento-area budtender, “but we don’t give prices out on the phone.” Instead, she suggests patients do their price-shopping on dispensary websites.

Be a patient patient.

“I have to remind myself to be patient, because not everyone knows exactly what they want,” says Jay, a compassionate user in Sacramento, “or maybe they’re visiting for the first time, like I was once.”

Don’t buy for others.

“It’s illegal,” notes James, a cannabis patient, who saw a man trying to buy for someone else. “He walks back into the waiting room from the cannabis room, and on the cell phone he’s saying, ‘They’re out of Sour Diesel. What do you want to do?’ I was wondering if someone was going to ask him to leave.”

Don’t try out your purchases in the dispensary parking lot.

This is a no-brainer that we heard from many budtenders. “Not even on the drive home,” says one. “Wait until you get home.”

Don’t gripe about your free gift.

“I started to hit a lot of dispensaries, picking up my free first-time-visitor gift, until one time the gift was just a Diet Pepsi,” says Daniel. “That’s when I started concentrating on the quality of a dispensary and not their free gift.”

Be an ambassador.

“I think it’s important that people visiting dispensaries try to present and conduct themselves is a positive way that helps promote marijuana,” says Randal. “Showing up in pajamas reeking like pot doesn’t do much for the culture.”