How Marijuana Dispensaries Can Accommodate the Disabled

If you have a marijuana dispensary, it should be able to facilitate people from all walks of life. It should also be accessible to the disabled visitors. And so, it is important to do your research to know what the law allows and what your responsibilities are to all of your customers. The first time marijuana visit can be quite intimidating for someone new to medical marijuana, much less, the disabled person. It can be quite intimidating to walk into marijuana dispensaries.

Even if you are a regular cannabis consumer, medical cannabis patient or someone curious off the streets, it is going to need confidence to just walk in and ask questions about their cannabis products. Can you imagine what it could feel like for the disabled person?

Living with Disability

When you have to live with your disability and the situation requires that you get medical marijuana products to make you feel better and you have to go to one of your local marijuana dispensaries to fill your prescription, you don't exactly know what you will encounter. Don't worry. You are not the only one because there are over 53 million disabled individuals in the United States that are going through mental, physical, sensory and functional disability.

Most of the medical conditions that disabled people experience are on the list of qualifying condition as it relates to the marijuana laws in most states. Let's take a look at the marijuana dispensaries and the part that they play in offering good customer service and catering also to the disabled by following the laws that govern how you deal with the disabled person.

The Dispensary

The staff members of medical marijuana dispensaries should have the appropriate training in handling the disabled individual who walks into the dispensary. For one, most of these marijuana dispensaries are required to adhere to the laws that govern the Americans with Disabilities Act. What does this mean? It means that all medical cannabis patients are to be accommodated when visiting a dispensary. How should this be done?

Improved Accommodations

The owners of all marijuana dispensaries should make any type of adjustment to accommodate the disabled and make it easier for them to enter and exit the building. This means installing a wheelchair ramp, if one is not already in place. Other things that should be considered are:

• Widening the doorway for easy entrance
• Provide chairs in the lobby area or waiting room for the disabled who finds it challenging to stand for long periods of time.
• Give a specific staff member the responsibility of taking care of the disabled or people with special needs
• Make sure there is installation of a dimmer switch for lighting adjustments. Especially for patients with sensitivity to light or those with head trauma or problems with seizures
• For those with poor eyesight, make the product menu font extra large
• Offer discounts for veterans

If a disabled person does not receive respectful treatment, marijuana dispensaries could be subject to negative reviews; online and offline. And this is not something that owners of marijuana dispensaries would like. To prevent negative reviews, you could go a step further and even offer the disabled free shuttle service. You can also allow therapy dogs to come into the store and continue to ensure good customer service. It would also be ideal to hire employees who are disabled.

Final Thoughts on How Marijuana Dispensaries Can Accommodate the Disabled

Doing all of these things and taking them seriously is a reasonable and appropriate way to accommodate the disabled into marijuana dispensaries that hope to make a difference in the community.

Open a Dispensary

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