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Picture a city where marijuana flowers, hash and edibles are sold on every block. Does this sound like a hippie’s dream? We are not there yet, but with over 100 licensed medical marijuana dispensaries, Portland is starting to look a lot like Potlandia. Let's remember these days. Once everything is legal, we will surely lose the mom & pop’ feel of these early-stage stores to big buck designs from corporations that are reading the smoke signals. Imagine McWeed and their sign ‘over 50,000,000 joints sold’.

The TV show Portlandia has famously mocked Portland as the place where young people go to retire. Here’s another take. It is the place where the young and the old increasingly go to get high. So, if you don’t mind, I am going to join a cadre of Portland marijuana aficionados in renaming our city... Potlandia.

Portland ranked third on the list of “America’s Pot Smoking Capitals”, according to the Daily Beast. Sadly, we were behind Boston and Tallahassee. Tallahassee! I am confident that we will soon take our rightful place as America’s number one pot-smoking city. Why? Portlanders are now free to legally possess marijuana and in 2016, anyone over 21 will be able to purchase marijuana in licensed retail locations. Legalization across America is launching what big business is projecting to be a $35 billion industry by 2020. This ‘Green Rush’ is the accelerating race to make huge bucks on America’s newest high-growth product category. Today, this Green Rush is highly visible on virtually every major street in Portland.

“Potlandia” takes a direct look at the wide range of Portland’s medical marijuana storefronts – before the Green Rush and the investable McDonaldization of the marijuana industry hits our streets.

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