On any given month, about 40,000 patients across Louisiana visit one of the state’s medical marijuana dispensaries to treat conditions such as anxiety, cancer, depression, chronic pain or PTSD.
Baton Rouge-based Capitol Wellness Solutions became the first pharmacy in the state to sell medical marijuana in August 2019.
While founder and owner Randy Mire won’t discuss revenue, Capitol Wellness has done well enough over the years to move into an expanded location and open a satellite store. The new Baton Rouge location, which opened Friday, is co-branded with Cookies, a half-billion dollar company founded by Berner, a rapper turned cannabis entrepreneur who has been featured on the cover of Forbes magazine.
Cookies sells a variety of medical and legal marijuana products, including smokable flowers, extracts, edibles, tinctures and creams.
Getting with a brand as well-known as Cookies is a coup for Capitol Wellness. The Baton Rouge location is the first of its kind in the state and the 77th branded store in the world. The company boasts flashy partnerships with former NBA great Gary Payton and rappers such as Rick Ross, El-P and Killer Mike.
Mire said he expects the partnership will lead more people to seek medical marijuana treatment.
“People are such creatures of habit as they see something they’re familiar with, that’s going to raise the awareness,” he said.
Mire has plans for more expansion. He plans to open an Ascension Parish dispensary in the next year.
In this week’s Talking Business, Mire discusses how he got started in the medical marijuana business, what the partnership with Cookies means for his company and the future of the industry in Louisiana.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me how Capitol Wellness got started.
I’ve had several pharmacies, and we shipped a lot of specialty medication to over 30 states. I’ve been licensed then to have a nurse go in the home and infuse specialty meds. We’ve taken care of very sick patients in their home with specialty medications. When medical marijuana was first coming on the radar as coming to Louisiana in 2012, I was one of the first to get involved in the program because of how passionate I am about how this could help patients.
What does it mean for you to have this partnership with Cookies?
We will be the premier location to sell all the Cookies product now that a Cookies location will be open. We have priority over all their products. Being with a brand like this really gets the word out to patients because so many patients still don’t realize there’s a dispensary in Louisiana. And what I enjoy most about this partnership is the brand awareness for patients. People when they have a brand that they trust, many people from our state have been to other states and walked in dispensaries.
For them to see that same brand represented now in Louisiana is amazing.
There’s so much confusion with the legal dispensaries and all the vape shops, all the people selling THC products, CBD products.
What makes Capitol Wellness different?
What makes us different is we’re the licensed dispensary to be able to sell tested medical marijuana. Half of the patients will utilize a smokable device because of the onset of action. If you have a migraine or you have pain or you want to fall asleep quickly, inhaling it works the fastest.
The edible products, they take a longer time to act. So unfortunately some people, they will eat one, they won’t feel the effect for 30 minutes and they’ll try another. We are always educating patients to go slow and wait for that effect as opposed to with smoking, it’s immediate.
Who is your customer?
All walks of life, every single walk of life. I’ll tell you, the average patient is a 40-year-old female. We have pediatric patients that suffer with autism or have epileptic seizures. College kids that can’t sleep at night or have anxiety because of other medications that they’re taking to cope with school. People that want relief from pain, anxiety or insomnia. Another big thing is the pain management doctors will send us a lot of patients that are wanting to not take as many opiates. While they still may need some, being on medical marijuana considerably reduces their opiate intake.
Where do you see things going for the medical marijuana dispensary business over the next couple of years?
Major awareness, more awareness, more educating the patients, being a lot easier for them to get enrolled in the program with the medical recommendations to see a doctor. Thirty medical marijuana locations should be open within the next year and a half, so once those are all open throughout the state, we should see a lot more awareness in patients realizing this is a solution.
*Article taken from https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/