Long line of customers greets Western New York's first Licensed Marijuana dispensary
OJ Barker bought a House of Sacci ball cap, Empire cannabis gummies, Pound Town pre-rolled joints and cannabis flower on Tuesday.
That purchase made history.
The Buffalo resident was the first person to buy recreational marijuana from a state-licensed dispensary in Western New York.
“This is going to take me right where I need to go,” he told the cashier with a laugh.
Barker was the first, but he wasn’t the last – far from it.
By the time Dank officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 501 Main St., dozens of customers had already lined up all the way down the block. They chatted, laughed and, yes, some smoked marijuana while they waited.
For many of those waiting in line, Dank was the first place in Buffalo where they could safely and conveniently buy cannabis products.
Just over a dozen state-licensed recreational cannabis dispensaries have opened, but none of them have been in Western New York until Tuesday afternoon.
“You know what you’re getting,” Justin Seitz, an employee at Bison Botanics, said waiting outside of Dank. “It’s safer, and honestly, it’s more convenient … to go somewhere that’s closer to home rather than, back in the day, a parking lot.”
Aaron Van Camp, the owner of Dank, had originally planned to open Buffalo’s first legal dispensary with a “chill” soft launch, but word spread too quickly for that.
He has been hard at work to get the doors open since he was awarded his conditional license April 3.
“We just didn’t realize that it was going to turn into this,” Van Camp said. “This is the largest soft opening I think anyone’s ever going to have.”
But he didn’t seem fazed by the change of plans. Dressed in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants, Van Camp posed for photos with friends and family, shook hands with elected officials and chatted with dozens of customers waiting in line. He said he was simply “relieved” that the day of Dank’s grand opening had finally arrived.
But it almost didn’t happen.
Government paperwork kept getting delayed. A federal lawsuit prevented the New York State Office of Cannabis Management from licensing any dispensaries in Western New York for months. Van Camp spent that time trying to find a landlord who would rent to his business until his friend found his current landlord on Facebook Marketplace.
“I was a day away from asking [the OCM] for my money back,” Van Camp said. “I didn’t think there was going to be a license.”
Despite finally getting the green light to open the business, he realizes he’s not out of the woods yet as he tries to make it work in a burgeoning but new and evolving industry.
“We’re not afraid that we’re going to get shut down or anything, but we are well aware that this is going to be a totally changing industry,” Van Camp said.
Dank won’t be the only state-licensed dispensary in Western New York for long. Another dispensary, Herbal IQ, is set to open in Depew on Friday. State officials have allocated a total of 22 licenses for recreational cannabis dispensaries in Western New York.
