Los Angeles has a medical marijuana dispensary for every 4,000 residents. Denver has one dispensary for every 1,500 or so residents.
But tiny Alma, Colorado, has a medical marijuana center for every 137.5 residents. Weird-but-true, Alma also is geographically the highest town in the continental U.S. at 10,600 feet; and its ZIP code is 80420 – a number chosen by the USPS decades before Prop 420 was a twinkle in legislators’ eyes.
Currently two dispensaries are duking it out to serve Alma’s 275 residents, High Country Healing and Alma Cannabis Therapeutics. Until last month there used to be three (that’s one dispensary per every 91.6 residents), but one closed in part due to struggles to meet strict Colorado regulations that require costly security and systems.