As most people know, Oregon has legal marijuana. Idaho, its neighbor to the east, does not. So you’d expect that many people from Idaho would travel to Oregon to get their dope. After all, it’s only about 50 miles from Boise to the border.
Except there’s one problem with that. Oregon allowed cities and counties that rejected the ballot issue by a large margin to opt out of having local dispensaries. And pretty much all eastern Oregon voted that way, the few exceptions being in the central part of the state, too far for a convenient drive from Idaho.
That brings us to Huntington. It’s a really small town, population about 400, and is only 30 miles along I-84 from the border. And they are the only place within about three-hours drive where the city council voted to allow marijuana to be sold in their city. So they have two weed shops that are doing land office business serving all these out-of-state (and even just out-of-town) customers.
So are there any other towns like this in other states that have legal weed? I imagine there may be several in Colorado, perhaps some in Washington. Which towns are likely to become Huntington’s in Massachusetts, Nevada, and California?
And it’s not actually on I-84 which is probably the deal here.
It was a major railroad junction. Lots of passenger traffic. Then passenger trains died and the freight traffic generally rolls straight thru.
Then I-84 was built. Despite extensive lobbying, the new highway went around Huntington. That area is really rough terrain. Deep, narrow, curvy canyons. That stretch was one of the last pieces of the original Interstate proposal to be finished. It took a lot of work. And that was taking the easy route rather than going thru Huntington.
Needless to say, the town’s been dying ever since.
Presumably they opted into legal weed to bring people and business in. Surprised Ontario didn’t opt in as well. Conservative place in general but very open minded about getting wasted. History of catering to Idaho shoppers (no sales tax).
One sees this sort of border sales with other substances where the laws or taxes differ. There is a big fireworks store on I-70 in PA just over the Maryland line, and some huge NH liquor stores on the border with Massachusetts. The town-by-town aspect of Huntington OR’s sales may be a little unusual.
Pullman, WA. 8 miles from Moscow, ID, home of the University of Idaho. There is even a pot shop on the highway between the two towns. What license plates do you think you see in that parking lot?
This part of the world rarely has huge population centers on opposite sides of the border. Eastern Washington and Oregon are low-population. Elko is the only town of size in NV (looks like 1 dispensary, don’t know if they’re ready for July 1). It is a bit of a drive for Utah, though maybe that’s a good thing as it lowers the chance of running into Mormon neighbors. West Wendover, NV, is right next to Wendover, NV and they’ve profited from being able to have casinos and alcohol, but no dispensaries that I see.
Indian tribes are allowed to make their own laws on this, with the caveat that it’s much safer for them if the state they’re in made it legal. It looks like the Modoc (NE California) made an attempt before legalization, though I doubt there’s much of an industry there.
If Boise people want to drive the 5 hours to Bend, there’s plenty o’ pots there.
Seems to be a snag in licensing. Don’t know/care too much about it, but it looks like the July timeline is right out the window. If you’re interested, you might find info on KOLO channel 8’s website.
Doing a land office business is right! I drove through Huntington on my way to Boise last year just out of curiosity–there were lines out the door and people hanging out by their cars parked all around the block. It was quite a shock seeing so much activity in a dusty little town with not much of anything else going on.
I’d think the first question would be if there are other setups like this, where individual towns can and do have their own more permissive laws. It was done on the county level with “wet/dry,” not the city level.
Sure, when my county was dry, there was a first town just outside the county that sold liquor. They always made a big deal of being the closest. But they weren’t the only town, and you could use a different road and go to a different town.
Though I’m not sure they even had to be in an incorporated town. Since it was at the county level, all that was required was that you were in the right county.
Oh, yes, I should have thought of Pullman. Virtually all of that 8 miles is in Washington, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone doesn’t open a shop immediately across the border, which if I remember correctly, would put it just outside the U of I campus. There may be a zoning issue that keeps this from happening, though.
How about across the border from State Line, ID? Googlemaps doesn’t show a dope shop that close to the border, but there are several in the Spokane Valley. Of course googlemaps is not omniscient, so there might be one anyway.
State Line is not really a town, more like part of the fairly built up corridor between Spokane WA (legal weed) and Coeur d’ Alene Idaho (no weed). The pot shops in Washington go so far as to advertise on the Idaho radio stations.
True. As the Wikipage says, it mainly supplies “adult services”. But it was around long before that corridor was built up. At one time, the drinking age in Idaho was only 19, and it had almost as many bars as it did inhabitants.
I did read an article about a pot shop application for a store less than a mile from Moscow, ID. Not sure if it was approved or not. However, it would be funny to see a pot shop one mile from Moscow, ID and then 6’ish miles to the nearest town in Washington.
This is a pot shop that will be about 1 mile from Moscow, ID while being about 6 miles from the closest town in WA. I wonder who they are expecting as customers?
BTW: Huntington is a great location for viewing the eclipse next month. Presumably there will be even more sales then to people looking to modify the experience.
