Seminole Heights has a new cannabis operator and medical dispensary, and contrary to the comments from your curmudgeonly neighbors, Curaleaf's staff isn't just a coalition of stoners.
""Everyone thinks our staff is just a bunch of potheads," assistant manager Elise Rodriguez told the Tampa Bay Times, "but they're trained and many come from states where it (marijuana) is legal such as Colorado, and have sports or medicine backgrounds.”
Products at the Seminole Heights shop — located at 6421 North Florida Ave. across the street from Trip's Diner, yum — include slim vapes, other handheld or tabletop vaporizers, concentrates, oils, topicals, capsules, cartridges and more.
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To purchase products, customers must have a prescription and their state-issued medical ID (TBBJ says the Florida Department of Health has 189,259 medical marijuana patients in its registry as of November 9 — that's up from 95,460 total patients on April 6).
And unlike Curaleaf's Best of the Bay-winning Palm Harbor location, the Seminole Heights spot does not have a drive-thru — but it will deliver the goods in unmarked, secured vehicles.
In fact, Curaleaf has a sterling rating on cannabis search engine Weedmaps (the only guy complaining is someone who is out of the delivery area), and many of its customers are actually folks like senior citizens looking for relief from conditions including chronic pain, spasticity due to multiple sclerosis, and chemotherapy-induced nausea.
The Curaleaf experience does have one parallel from the weed-deals your pappy used to take part in back the day, however: It's cash only since the products aren't covered under insurance.
The spot opens at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday and at noon on Sunday.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2018.