Medical marijuana dispensary review: Mile High Dispensary -- Englewood

Mile High Dispensary was a random stop. I had driven down to Littleton only to find I had the wrong address for another club. Frustrated at my stoner-moment, I made my way back north up Broadway through Englewood and turned in.

Mile High Dispensary -- Englewood

Location: 3751 South Broadway in Englewood. Second location at 1350 S. Sheridan Street in Denver.
Phone: 303-762-6337
Website: http://milehighmedicalmarijuana.com/
Hours of operation: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.
Owner's representative: Victor (did not give his last name).
Opened: July 4, 2009.
Raw marijuana price range: $35/eighth
Other types of medicine: Edibles, hash.
Handicap accessible?: Yes.

Mile High Dispensary operates out of a simple storefront in a strip center off South Broadway, next to a head shop and across from a Volkswagen bus crammed with old beetles and hippie vans. But the vibe MHD gives off isn't heady. There's no flashing neon pot leaves, and aside from the steel bars behind the glass windows and the word "dispensary" in their name, it could be just another business you drive past and never give a second thought. An owner I spoke with, Victor, said they like it that way. "I'm not out to upset my community," he said. "This is a nice area."

I was buzzed through a security door to a woman behind a large, low secretary desk half paying attention to the 24-hour-news station on the small flatscreen hung high on the wall. And as random as my stop was, I still managed to run into someone I recognized in retrospect: Tuyet Nguyen, a former Westword contributor and college colleague of mine. I have no idea if she knows who I am, or who Will Breathes is, for that matter. But neither of us made the connection in the shop, although we both did a double take. Then I handed over my ID and paperwork for a quick copy before making my way through the door to where the meds were.

Over the last year, I have become used to large dispensary rooms with long, open bud bars. Not here. Instead, it was a skinny room painted blue with clouds everywhere. To the left was a bulletproof window and a lone budtender on the other side. The room had a cigarette funk to it, which Victor said was from their smokes-hop neighbor; they've mentioned the aroma to their landlord. Victor also said the smoke shop complains about the smell of fresh ganja wafting the other way -- but I doubt the smell of marijuana is really deterring bong sales.

The budtender was a tall, friendly guy who showed me what all they had in stock -- which wasn't much. On the counter, but on the other side of the glass, were six small jars with samples of herb. When I asked to see a strain, the budtender would pass the jar through the small hole at the bottom of the glass. It was a Sunday, and as the budtender explained, they bring in herb twice a week and when it runs out, it runs out. From what Vincent said, they have two warehouse-size hydro sea-of-green setups going and are pulling down crops every week. He says they run clone-only from a garden of about twenty mothers. As of now, the herb sells for $35 an eighth across the board, or $10 per-gram if you want to break up strains. Victor said nonmember prices were going up to $45 soon, but he wasn't sure when.

Mile High Dispensary doesn't sell just a gram of herb, nor do they sell pre-rolleds. "There is a thin line between dope pushing and medicine," said Victor. "Sure, there is money to be made there, but we aren't going to encourage people coming in and buying a joint and then they go to their car and smoke it ... That is a quick high. You can't just go get one Oxycontin from a pharmacy."

I sniffed my way through all of the jars and ended up taking home a gram each of the three best-looking strains. The shop also had a lot of sweet edibles, like Cheeba Chews, lollipops and honey hash sticks, as well as a fridge full of brownies and cupcakes. Not much of a concentrate section, but there were $20 grams of blended bubble hash. The budtender weighed everything out well over a gram for me, and separated the buds from the larger stems -- something I'm still trying to figure out if I like or not. On one hand, it's nothing I would smoke or care to have, but on the other, my buds are getting manhandled. My herb bagged up, I thanked the budtender and quickly made my past the reception desk to my car.

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