Delaware weed stores will have the chance to offer ‘deli-style’ sales

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When buying lunch meat from the grocery store, you usually have two options: visit the deli and get your turkey sliced to your desired weight and thickness, or grab some already packaged.

That’s what advocates for marijuana users want in Delaware’s retail stores when they open in about a year — the ability to smell and inspect the buds they might be interested in buying, rather than just getting something in a labeled, resealable plastic pouch.

Zoe Patchell of the Delaware Cannabis Advocacy Network says many users prefer and deserve to have the choice of what she calls “deli-style” or “apothecary-style” shopping for weed.

“Consumers know what they’re getting, and they can see the entire product before they purchase it. So it really cuts down on the demand for returns, which is not really a common proprietary industry practice,” Patchell told WHYY News.

“No one wants to be sold a product that they didn’t get to see before they purchased it and especially not when they get that product home and find out it’s either not what they wanted or even worse, that there was something wrong with the product.”

The proposed regulations for Delaware don’t currently allow for deli-style shopping. They mirror the ones currently in place for the medical marijuana dispensaries. Leaf marijuana and products such as edibles must be in packaging that will reveal whether it’s been tampered with before purchase, and is re-sealable once it’s opened if the package contains multiple doses.

However, during a recent meeting of the Marijuana Control Act Oversight Committee, members Patchell and Adam Windett made a presentation about how they want dispensaries to display and sell bulk marijuana.

That demonstration changed the mindset of Marijuana Commissioner Robert Coupe, who told WHYY News he would soon propose offering retailers a variance from the packaging mandate as long as they can convince his office that the weed will be free of contaminants and the quality remains unaffected.

“As long as they satisfy those areas of concern, then we could issue the variance and they would be able to offer marijuana in that form as well as the prepackaged form,’’ Coupe said.

“We want to make sure that the consumer’s aware, if it’s being sold that way,’’ there could be “additional risks as far as the quality, as far as bacteria getting into that jar or getting into their marijuana, that we’re not going to be able to control like we can in the prepackaged world,’’ Coupe said. “It becomes an agreement between the consumer and that retailer that this is how I want to purchase it.“

That’s just fine with Patchell, who has shopped for weed that’s kept in sealed mason jars in states such as Oregon and Colorado, and says the practice also lets customers evaluate the product’s freshness.

‘It’s the same reason why people buy fresh vegetables over pre-canned vegetables,’’ she said. Prepackaged cannabis “typically is less fresh. The product is more dry.”

Delaware neighbors New Jersey and Maryland don’t allow deli-style sales in their recreational weed dispensaries. Pennsylvania has not legalized marijuana.