Once a month, a luxury coach pulls up to a gated community in Orange County, California. All the passengers inside are seniors, and the bus takes them to a marijuana dispensary.
Arthur Greenspan is a first-time rider, and he’s taking the trip to the dispensary in hopes to buy cannabis that will help get him off pain pills.
Sandy Sopher, however, is a frequent rider to the dispensary.
“I have tried smoking the bud; I’ve got vaporizer, edibles,” Sopher says. “Need to realize we're not a bunch of crazy people. We just want help.”
Seniors make up a growing customer base for pot shops. And places like Bud and Bloom in Orange County are helping their senior customers get there by offering a free bus service.
New visitors like Greenspan start by getting a class on cannabis. But for returning customers like Sopher, they are free to head straight to the bud.
"This is a sativa,” Sopher explains. “It is good if you wanna stay awake during the day. You wanna do your laundry. You want a little lift. You have pain, but you wanna function.”
Sopher says her only regret is the fact her 99-year-old father won’t give it a try.
"Because of the stigma, and oh, what if the neighbors know? What will they think?" she says.
However, Sopher says it’s a stigma she shed a long time ago.
