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[DISPENSARY REVIEW]
Tommy Chims Smokes Greenlight Dispensary’s Weed
Written by THOMAS CHIMCHARDS
Ithought I’d seen the pinnacle of pot-purchasing convenience as a teenager.
Back in those days, one of the people whom I would frequent for weed-buying purposes had set up an ingenious method of peddling his wares out of his parents’ basement. This fella, who I’m going to refer to as This Guy going forward (not to be confused with The Guy or That Guy), had installed a small doorbell on the outside of his basement window. But rather than ringing a bell when pushed, the button was hooked up to a lamp, so whenever someone would come to pick up a bag, they’d simply hit the button a couple of times, whereupon a light would begin ashing in This Guy’s room, alerting him to the presence of a customer. This Guy would then open up his window, greet whomever was standing outside and supply them with whatever they came to buy.
It was genius, really. This Guy’s parents were none the wiser, because they wouldn’t even notice people coming over and sneaking into their side yard, nor would they hear anything when people did show up. It also 86ed the tedious ritual of having to sit in your dealer’s house and pretend to care about anything they have to say, as you were on your way in mere minutes and never even invited inside in the first place. Really, it was a great setup.
And while it’s still fair to say that was the most convenient way I have ever purchased ten-strips of acid tabs in my life, we have an exciting new contender on the weed front, thanks to the drivethrough window at Greenlight Dispensary’s Ferguson location (517 South Florissant Road, Ferguson; 844-785-9333).
The ordering process here is even easier than the ingenious idea This Guy had concocted. Customers simply hop onto Greenlight’s online menu, pick out what they want and then upload photos of their ID and medical card. Once the order is accepted, you get a series of text messages helpfully telling you its status until you’re ultimately informed that it’s time to come pick up your goods.
The drive-through itself is located in the back of Greenlight’s Ferguson location and is less like a fast-food situation than it is an automatic car wash. Customers pull up to a bay door and wait for it to open, whereupon you pull into a small garage with a window within. There, you hand over your ID and medical card, and soon you are handed a bag containing your goods, after which a second bay door opens and you’re on your way. No muss, no fuss.
That process was a dream, and certainly a huge selling point for Greenlight, but I still wanted to get a good sense of the dispensary itself, so after finished that transaction I parked my car out front and made my way inside. Greenlight is different from many of the local dispensaries in that it doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to style itself as a house of medicine, which can come across as kind of stuffy — on my visit, for example, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes and Nelly were all playing over the house speakers, none of whom I’ve ever heard at my doctor’s office. s a fan of early s radio rap, I found it to be a welcome development. Upon entry, I gave my ID and medical card to the person behind the front desk and sat for just a moment in a small waiting area before my budtender came and led me to the sales oor.
Inside, the shop has several glass cases displaying its products. One interesting detail this place has going for it too is a atscreen T showing multiple views of Greenlight’s grow operation in Kansas City, at a , -s uare-foot former Pepsi factory where all of its cannabis, edibles and prerolls are cultivated and packaged for sale. It’s nice being able to see exactly where the product you’re purchasing comes from.
Another thoughtful detail is Greenlight’s pricing structure, which builds taxes into the advertised price of its products in the store — helpful for avoiding the receipt shock that can come when those taxes are piled on at the end. (It should be noted, though, that the prices listed on the website are still pre-tax, which can be a little confusing.)
I went with an eighth of AK-47 , an eighth of ava Ca e and a preroll of Magic Melon . My total came to .
I started with the AK-47. Rated at 14.93 percent THC, this Greenlight-branded strain came in a little pouch of “budlets,” meaning it ain’t the prettiest to look at, but it comes at a discount. Essentially,
HIGHER THOUGHT S
From the altered mind of THOMAS CHIMCHARDS
Continued on pg 28
Welcome to Higher Thoughts, wherein ol’ Tommy Chims smokes one strain from this review — in this case, Lava Cake — and then immediately writes whatever comes to mind in the hopes of giving you, dear reader, a clearer picture of its overall mental effects: no rules, no predetermined word counts and, most crucially, no editing. Here we go:
I KNOW THAT this may ruffle a few say: What about the saxophone? And feathers, and I’m already kicking my- yes, I was alive during the Clinton adself for walking into this hornets’ nest, ministration too, so I know that the sax but I just can’t keep quiet on this sub- is, like, cool as hell or whatever. But ject any longer: I think the trombone consider this: Clinton’s support for the is the most badass of all the brass in- 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was struments to play an “air” version of. a politically motivated act that may well You get to punch your fist wildly with have been a war crime under internaeach change in pitch, you can pretend tional humanitarian law, and the actual to know what you’re doing as you slide act of playing an air saxophone is not your arm back and forth in smaller dissimilar to what it would look like if and larger increments to correspond you were to grab a ferret and tickle it with the notes, and it’s not the air- with both hands. Plus you gotta believe trumpet, which really just consists of that J.J. Johnson would never have althe wiggling of a few fingers and an lowed the bombing of the RTS headair-mute if you’re lucky. quarters to occur under his watch. I’m
Now, I know what you’re going to sorry, but it’s just not badass, man. Was that helpful? Who knows! See you next week.
Thomas K. Chimchards is RFT’s resident cannabis correspondent and aspiring air-tromboner. Email him tips at tommy.chim@riverfronttimes.com and follow him on Twitter at @TOMMYCHIMS
Should you go inside, Greenlight has an appealing setup. | COURTESY GREENLIGHT DISPENSARY
GREENLIGHT
Continued from pg 27
you’re dealing with the shake at the end of the bag here, but I knew what I was getting into so I had no issues with that. Upon opening the bag I was met with a rich, dark smell, sort of a cross between coffee and chocolate. The crumbles of weed within are a light, bright green color, with hints of darker green and orange hairs, and a really great, even distribution of trichomes. On breakup the fairly dry budlets crumbled easily and left a light dusting of keef all over my fingers. n inhale there’s a rich, sour avor that reminded me of the crawly leaves that sometimes separate buds — still pleasant, but not top-notch avorwise or anything (again, to be expected, and consistent with the fact these are budlets). This strain delivers a relaxed and mellow high that left me with the focus and concentration necessary to beat the Temple Tempest level of Donkey Kong Country, even as the Milwaukee’s Best Light I was also consuming eroded my hand-eye coordination. For that I will be forever grateful.
Next up I dove into the Lava Cake. Rated at 20.36 percent THC, this Greenlight-branded strain boasts smaller, dark green buds with hints of lime green and purple patches, absolutely encrusted with orange and white hairs and a generous dusting of trichomes. The nuggets are tight and dense, and much more moist than the AK-47 budlets were — really beautiful, well-structured little buds — and I again got keef all over my fingers on brea up a grinder might be the way to go with this one). Both the smell and taste of this strain are exceptionally fruity and sweet — downright delicious, even — and I felt its effects almost immediately. This stuff is strong as hell, and I found myself high as a kite within only minutes, my eyes droopy, my body relaxed and my appetite stimulated to the tune of an entire bag of Lay’s potato chips. Handle with care, especially if you are a novice smoker (or on a diet).
I had a little trouble with the Magic Melon preroll. While the weed itself is top-notch, I found it difficult to hit for about the first third of the joint, li e it was packed too tight. I had to keep squishing it up and rolling it between my fingers to get a pull off of it, and by the end it had a run on one side. None of this is the end of the world, by any means — especially considering the quality of the cannabis. Rated at 14.34 percent THC, this strain, also Greenlight-branded, is exceptionally smooth on inhale, with a sweet, chocolatey taste that left me pleasantly high but not debilitated. It was certainly worth the trouble of a stuffy joint, and ’d suspect mine was an outlier anyway.
All told, Greenlight is yet another excellent St. Louis dispensary with its own unique personality and some impressive products — that Lava Cake, especially, is a joy to behold. ts drive-through is nothing short of a revelation, one that will be invaluable to customers who are intimidated by the experience of visiting a dispensary or even those who are just big on convenience.
Now, when is Missouri gonna legalize medicinal acid tabs? I’m looking forward to hitting up a drive-through for that. n
Through the Cracks
Missouri bill to undo drug law damage deleted before vote
Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI
Apotentially life-changing amendment to a public safety bill was mysteriously deleted before legislators voted on it, sidelining a change to a harsh drug law that could mean the difference between freedom and decades in prison for dozens of drug offenders.
Senate Bill 26 passed on Friday, the last day of the session. It was supposed to include language restoring parole eligibility for some people convicted under Missouri’s so-called “prior and persistent drug offender statute.” But the version approved and sent to the governor didn’t include the the measure introduced by Rep. Cheri Toalson-Reisch. She told the RFT on Monday she had been assured the language was being included in a final version, but when she tried to confirm that on Tuesday, she was told it had been left out through a clerical error. Now, it could be too late.
“I’m very upset,” Toalson-Reisch tells RFT. Enacted in 1989, Missouri’s “prior and persistent drug offender” law transformed low-level drug charges, even nonviolent ones, into decades-long prison sentences.
The law set a ten-year minimum prison term for offenders with two prior drug convictions, but it was the elimination of their eligibility for parole that locked them into sentences usually reserved for murderers or repeat violent offenders.
Although the law was repealed and replaced in 2017, Missouri’s Supreme Court in 2020 rejected arguments that the repeal should be applied retroactively.
Legally speaking, the ruling left drug offenders in what Toalson-Reisch, who represents part of Boone County, calls “the crack” — trapped in prison sentences governed by the pre-2017 criminal code despite the repeal intended to help them.
Under the measure she introduced this year, parole eligibility would be restored to drug offenders convicted of first- and second-degree drug trafficking who have served at least ten years of their sentence. A parole board would also have to determine that a person has a “reasonable probability” of not reoffending if released.
The focus on trafficking charges meant it would affect only a portion of roughly 230 “prior and persistent” drug offenders still serving lengthy sentences, but it would help some. The Department of Corrections identified 35 offenders serving time for trafficking, including eight who have served ten years or more.
Timothy Prosser, the subject of a 2016 RFT cover story, is one of those who could have benefited. He is serving a life sentence without parole for a methrelated trafficking charge, a punishment so extreme that the even prosecutor on his case now calls it “unconscionable.”
Toalson-Reisch’s amendment was among a flurry of additions attached last week to Senate Bill 26, a wide-ranging bill that included a police “bill of rights.”
Several controversial measures were quietly killed, including the ones seemingly targeting protesters with a newly created crime for intentionally blocking a roadway.
But Toalson-Reisch believed her amendment was among several key criminal justice reforms, including a ban on police chokeholds, that survived.
She says it now appears that a legislative “drafter” mistakenly erased the amendment prior to the final vote, though details are unclear.
“Once I find out which drafter thought this was wrong, whatever they were thinking, we’re all going to sit down with the House drafter,” Toalson-Reisch says. “We’re going to have a talk and make sure we’re all on the same page and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
She plans to refile the bill next year. However, there is no guarantee it will pass in a new vote. n
In a cruel twist, a key amenment was erased from the bill. | VIA FLICKR / KOMUNEWS
