Discussing your relationship with cannabis can be a dicey move—there’s still a stigma. If you bring it up around the wrong friend or co-worker or family member, you can instantly become a litany of things: lazy or sketchy or criminal. So how do you change that? There’s no overnight remedy, but MedMen, a California-based cannabis company with dispensaries in six states, is leading the long PR battle on behalf of marijuana.
MedMen wants to make it clear: It is not your dad's Cheech and Chong dealer. Its goal is take all those tired notions about marijuana—the laziness and the sketchiness and the criminality—and revamp them. Its dispensaries are cleaner than most grocery stores. The walls, bright red and white, come to life as halo-lighting bounces off their glossy sheens. After showing your ID at the door, you’re greeted by a line of identical, glass-topped stations with tablets. In short, you’ve entered a pristine, candy cane-striped wonderland. Fittingly, the company has referred to itself as the "Apple Store of Weed" on several occasions. Other publications have dubbed it the "[Insert Desirable Brand] of Cannabis"—including the "Starbucks of Pot" and the "Barneys of Weed." MedMen's color scheme, its newly announced clothing line, and its Millennial appeal all scream, "Cannabis isn't something to fear."
On the business side, MedMen's recent acquisition of PharmaCann, another cannabis company, stands to change the fiscal apprehension some have about the cannabis market. But the young company is also facing a handful of lawsuits this year seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. MedMen might be charging forward, but the path to cannabis normalization is proving to be just as messy as it is invigorating.
