[rconti]

Right, because Seattle probably had lots of smaller neighborhood shops, whereas the "destination" shops in Vancouver were likely bigger and closer to the freeway.

Not that Vancouver doesn't have a decently-sized population in its own right, but it only stands to reason that the smaller city would have fewer, busier shops serving tourists from across the river.

[SmellTheGlove]

Seattle didn't though, largely because licensing was completely bottlenecked. The city itself took a while to permit more than a handful of shops. I don't know the numbers, but given that Seattle is a bigger city than Portland, I wonder what the data normalized to shops per capita - hypothetically considering Vancouver to be part of Portland, as it probably would be if there wasn't a state line in the way!

[rconti]

Ah, I didn't realize that. I've been away for a number of years, and on my last visit, there were already quite a few.

[SmellTheGlove]

I'm not a Seattle resident, so I could be way off, but it was something I went out of my way to observe. We were spending a week every summer in Seattle, and Washington had legalized while my home state of Maine was debating it. I remember in 2015, licensing was still an issue in Seattle and there were like ~3 dispensaries in the city, none of them downtown. I think there was one down in the ID, one a bit north, but nothing centrally located. Then in 2016 there were at least a couple that popped up closer in.

I tend to think that cannabis is pretty harmless for adults and I voted for legalization in Maine, but I'm okay with a slow rollout. There's a whole generation of folks out there that think the stuff makes you crazy, so there's some benefit to slow uptake.