Medical marijuana dispensary review: Earth's Medicine on Federal

I have yet to find a decent shop on Federal, and Earth's Medicine is no exception. I felt rushed the short eight minutes I was in the store -- and during my brief follow-up phone call, it was clear the owner had better things to do than talk with me.

Earth's Medicine

Location: 74 Federal Boulevard, Denver
Phone: 720-542-8513
Website: Earth's Medicine Facebook page
Hours of operation: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.
Owner/manager: Hai Do
Mission statement: "To provide good quality products."
Opened: November 2009
Raw marijuana price range: Owner said $35 for an eighth, but I was charged $40.
Other types of medicine: Pressed kief discs, brownies, cookies.
Handicap accessible?: Yes.

I picked Earth's Medicine on a whim. From the outside, it looks no different from the dozens of other shops in run-down properties on Federal. I parked in front of the neon pot leaf and walked in through the front glass door and iron gate as the alarm system screamed "FRONT DOOR!" The entry area was separated from the other half of the room by a counter featuring a top-to-ceiling sheet of shatterproof glass with bank-teller-like holes through which to communicate.

I finished up my paperwork and was led through the lounge area, where a few people were watching TV, past a small display case of glass Incredibowls and vaporizers, and through yet another waiting room with a couch in it to the bud room. Random Nuggets and Rockies posters hung on the walls along with a Colorado state flag and pot pictures, giving the place the feel of a bachelor pad occupied by a twenty-something sports fan.

I was introduced to my budtender, who greeted me with a wave as he shuffled some jars around under the glass cabinet. I told him I like to stick with sativa-heavy herb, and he immediately pulled out a jar of "Crystal" and shoved it under my nose. The most description I got from him was "Okay, good. This good sativa." The herb had been cured, but clearly not long enough, as the smell of hay was more dominant than the light skunky smell I was expecting. Before I could even move on to another strain, though, the budtender was clearing his scale and weighing out an eighth for me. I had to stop him and ask to see more jars, which seemed to annoy him. He quickly pulled out two more jars and hurriedly opened them up and put them on the counter for me to examine. But after I took a whiff from the jar of Hawaiian and said it smelled good, he again grabbed for the jar to weigh out an eighth. This time, I had to blatantly tell the guy to slow down and let me look at the rest of the herb before I would make my choice. By this point, his body language was pretty telling; it was obvious he felt I was wasting his time. So I looked at one more jar of Blue Dream before closing out our transaction.

As he weighed my bags, I finally got a chance to look around the sparsely decorated room. The only real artwork hung was a massive, fifteen-foot marlin stuffed and mounted on the wall, which would be fitting if the shop had a nautical theme -- or if we weren't 5,280 feet above sea level and at least two states away from the ocean. There were also a handful of small clones and cups of "spider mite treatment." The budtender shied away from telling me what, exactly, the treatment was.

The shop had a sparse selection of edibles from local vendors, with most of their cooler display sitting empty, as well as pressed discs of kief for $15 per gram -- but Earth's Medicine was out of any hash or hash oil the day I was in. The shop did have some pretty thick pre-rolled joints for $5 a pop, so I grabbed one to see if it was fat with buds or stuffed with cough-inducing trim leaves. Both the herb and the pre-rolled were bagged up in old-school lick-and-stick sandwich baggies with no labels. Now, I don't think that all shops have to sell herb in pop-top jars, but considering I'm no longer buying from the black market, I at least expect Ziploc baggies and some sort of labeling, even if it's scrawled on with a sharpie.

The budtender said my total for the herb and pre-rolled was $45 cash, and added I would have to "pay tax" if I paid by credit card. I was unclear if he meant that I would have to pay the credit card surcharge, if tax was included in cash transactions, or if they simply were taking tax-free cash under the table for herb. A few days later, the owner told me that the cap was $35 and that nobody would have said it was $40. My receipt says otherwise, but the owner refused to believe me.

My search goes on for a worthwhile shop on Federal...

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