‘Achieve Your Higher Purpose’ at MJ’s Market
MJ’s Market looks like a high-end jewelry store with its wares sparkling beneath gently lit glass counters. A security guard eyes you at the door, asking for ID, checking to see if you belong before buzzing you in.
I offered a confession, along with my business card.
“I’m a journalist and I’d like to write a story now that you’re open,” I said. “And, well… I’m also a virgin.”
He grinned as he buzzed me inside. “You’re definitely in the right place.”
Welcome to Grafton’s very first retail marijuana dispensary, tucked away at 13 Centennial Drive inside an unassuming office park near the Grafton Commuter Rail. From the outside, it’s strictly business, with clouded glass and not a single marijuana leaf in sight.
Inside, there’s a velvet green throne beneath a neon sign depicting two bearded men. One is Mitch Gaffney, the company’s general manager.The other is the company grower, both dedicated to MJ’s motto, “Achieve Your Higher Purpose.”
Both men frequently pose for pictures with happy customers sitting on the throne, happily clutching their MJ’s Market bags.
“There’s a large stigma about cannabis, still, and we’re trying to change that,” Gaffney said.
Part of that is the layout of MJ’s Market — the counters, the hand-blown pipes, the comfortable green couches, the art (also for sale, courtesy of the Blackstone Valley Art Association) on the walls. But a large part of that is the customer experience.
While other dispensaries have “budtenders,” MJ’s employs “cannasseurs.” Their job is not only to serve the customers, but also to find them the marijuana experience they desire. Do they need help with sleep, appetite, pain, anxiety, depression? Or are they seeking something for entertainment?
“I never inhaled. I’ve never even smoked a cigarettee,” I confessed to Wesley Swymer, my own personal cannasseur. “Well, I did get a contact high just for breathing at a Pink Floyd concert in 1987.”
Swymer glanced at the canister of cannabis I was eyeing, a strain with the name “chocolate.”
“That is NOT for you,” he said with amusement, “I could smoke it, I’d get a good high. It’s not for beginners.”
The marijuana products come with a visual grading system. Green, with a figure of a running man, is for Satvia, a more stimulating effect. Yellow, with a figure standing on one leg, is a hybrid that promotes balance. Red, with a reclining figure, is for Indica, a variety that makes you relaxed.
There are containers of flower, dropper bottles of tinctures, samplings of edibles, and a variety of glass-blown pipes from a Rhode Island glassblower.
The dispensary is just the first stage for MJ’s Market. The next build-out is for growing cannabis and manufacturing product, with the ultimate aim of opening a medical facility. Clients, Gaffney said, will take comfort in knowing their products are made by people who have cared for the plants from seed to sale.
Swymer walks over to me bearing a box with a tiny glass tube filled with just a little marijuana, a .3g “one hitter” called “Pie Till I Die” by Ozone. We add a 100 mg bar of dark chocolate after I promise to consume only one square.
On Saturday, chickening out of lighting my tiny pipe, I snuck a square of chocolate into my mouth without mentioning the experiment to my husband (everyone needs someone to rebel against). I had this vague idea of grabbing dinner and heading over to the Grafton Lions’ Haunted Hayride.
Stop laughing.
The room was elongating. I walked around touching things — our beagle’s ears, the warm towels, soap bubbles as I washed my face. I swayed and danced around. I tried to watch a movie and ended up eating half a box of Count Chocula.
MJ’s Market will hold its grand opening Friday, October 29, at 11 a.m.
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