Benefits of Having A Dispensing Collective in Your Community

• Dispensing collectives provide benefits to the sick and suffering in your community. Dispensaries remove common barriers to accessing cannabis medicines. Often patients are not skilled or physically able to cultivate their medicines. A rapid onset of a serious illness normally does not afford a patient the several months and extensive costs it takes to produce quality cannabis medicines. A dispensary can provide these medicines as an alternative to potentially dangerous illicit transactions.
• Dispensing collectives provide psychosocial health benefits to patients in your community. Often patients find more than just safe and effective medicines in a collective setting. They find a community to be a part of and in turn experience much higher levels of satisfaction and wellness than a patient who is isolated away from others.
• Dispensing collectives provide key heath and social services to their patients. Dispensaries offer a wide array of cannabis therapies, giving patients the opportunity to share experiences on what may work best for different afflictions and find different methods of ingestion, such as tinctures and extracts to treat their symptoms. Collectives also provide a vast selection of social services to their patients, including counseling, support groups, help with housing and meals, hospice care, and alternative therapies like massage and yoga. These support services give most patients the opportunity to experience and try treatments they normally could not afford or known existed.
• Dispensing collectives increase public safety in the areas around them. Many cities and towns have found that crime and unwanted behaviors have decreased in an area where a well-run and regulated dispensing collective exists. Collectives take security seriously, often employing multiple security guards and implementing security cameras and alarm systems. These are natural deterrents to those who engage in unwanted behaviors and they normally move to a less monitored area, increasing safety for the collective and the neighborhood it serves.
• Dispensing collectives are good neighbors and can revitalize an area. Collectives instill good neighbor policies with their members that encourage them to be conscious and positive forces in the areas around the collective. A collective brings new people to the area to access services, which brings foot traffic to neighboring businesses and increases the vitality of the neighborhood by bringing customers to areas they normally would not visit. They patronize other businesses for convenience.
• Dispensing collectives create jobs in the community. With unemployment rates at extremely high levels, it is important to realize that a dispensing collective will employ at least 10-15 people, including management, service personnel, security, and community liaison positions.
• Dispensing collectives provide much needed revenue through business and sales taxes. A well-run dispensing collective can provide a great deal of revenue through normal business taxes and to the county through sales taxes. Oakland passed Measure F in July 2009 taxing collectives at 1.8% or 15 times the normal business rate. The measure passed with 80% of voters’ approval. Many other cities are putting the same type of measure on the upcoming ballots for special election.
• Collectives are not for profit organizations. Collectives use excess revenue to fund local projects and worthwhile organizations, such as food banks, homeless shelters, and educational assistance funds.