![]() About three-quarters of the respondents identified themselves as “very conservative.” And 50 percent of them favored legalizing marijuana for medical use. Indeed, Briggs - who is running for reelection to a third term - said that he conducted an internal poll of regular Republican voters in the 7th District, which stretches from rural North Knox County to Farragut, with a dogleg through downtown. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.” “Quite frankly, the best thing for the public would be to just ban it completely,” he said. He recognizes the logical problem in sending people to prison for trafficking in one form of intoxicating cannabis, while allowing an entirely unregulated legal market to boom for a slightly different form. Richard Briggs, R-Knoxville, a persistent skeptic of legalizing marijuana. The downtown Knoxville location is in the district of state Sen. Rekesh Ali, co-owner of the Holistic Connection's Knoxville store, behind the "Dab Bar." It bills itself as a “cannabis dispensary,” all but inviting comparison to legal marijuana outlets elsewhere. The Holistic Connection store - a franchise of a Tennessee chain that now has 13 locations, most in the middle of the state - leans into that contradiction. The answer lies in the state’s increasingly contradictory approach to substances derived from different but closely related plants of the same genus. “All day every day, ‘How is it legal?’” Ali said, repeating the question he hears most from customers. But at least as far as the government is concerned, it’s not marijuana. It looks like marijuana, and it smells like marijuana, and - crucially, to the prospects for Ali’s business - it has psychoactive properties like marijuana. That feeling only increases when co-owner Rekesh Ali opens the lid on a jar of thick green buds and an aroma familiar to anyone who’s ever been to Bonnaroo wafts out. Gay St., you could be forgiven for wondering if you’re really in Tennessee.Įven a leading Republican skeptic says "the public is ready" for medical marijuana.Įverything from the array of cannabis-infused products at a retail counter up front to the fancy glass pipes on the “Dab Bar” at the back feels very much like the kind of dispensaries you see in states that have legalized the sale and consumption of marijuana. If you walk into The Holistic Connection at 716 S. ![]()
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