Oldies Want A Dispensary - Walnut Creek Says No.

Considering the late great American counter-culture intellectual and writer Hunter S Thompson made Walnut Creek his home this seems a doubly strange decision by the town.

SF Gate reports

“My wife and I get high on the weekends,” Mike Kuller tells me, with a frankness that might surprise you given the fact that he’s a 76-year-old retired pharmacist. The herbal drug helps the couple deal with the aches and pains of getting old, he says, but their local government has put a big hurdle in between them and legal weed: There’s no legal pot shop in town.

Kuller lives in Walnut Creek, an East Bay city of about 70,000 people at the base of Mount Diablo. More specifically, he lives in the sprawling senior-living community known as Rossmoor — and he’s noticed an increasing number of his neighbors are also enjoying the benefits of using cannabis.

Because Walnut Creek is one of the hundreds of California cities that outright ban legal weed storefronts, the only way residents at Rossmoor can get weed is by using an online ordering service, or driving miles away to a different city.

That’s made residents at this community among the most vocal supporters for bringing legal weed storefronts to Walnut Creek. It may sound surprising — grandparents and older folks aren’t usually associated with getting high on weed — but people over the age of 65 are now the fastest growing group of cannabis users in America.

“I think a lot of seniors are aware of the benefits,” Kuller says, while sitting outside of a community clubhouse at Rossmoor. “The problem for them is access, particularly here in Rossmoor where you have 10,000 seniors, and if they’re not web savvy they can’t find [cannabis] online.”