Green Doesn't Always Mean Go
Owners of NJ Dispo Blue Violets Talk About Their Legal Fight To Open Their Doors and Using Terpene Education As Their Not-So-Secret Weapon
Photos Provided By Author
As a born-and-raised Jersey girl who loves to “garden,” I was stoked when The Garden State finally legalized cannabis. After a few years of having to hunt for dispensaries nearby, imagine my sheer delight when I passed a dispensary just a few blocks from my apartment in Hoboken, NJ. The opaque window with a simple but sweet calligraphed logo read Blue Violets.
I couldn’t wait for them to open. And I waited. And waited. Every time I passed by their window, I took a peek to see if there were any signs of life. Little did I know, owners Max and Lauren were going head-to-head in a legal battle with Hoboken neighbors who were determined to misunderstand them and their business.
Meanwhile, I did a dive into their social media while I waited for them to open, and I learned that Lauren is a registered nurse who has seen the value of cannabis for her patients and wanted to bring it to the public. Their website had education as the main focus, especially on terpenes. As a previous healthcare worker who transitioned into the cannabis space, I felt immediately connected to her and the dispensary’s story.
So, once they held their soft opening and were able to have customers come into the store, I finally made it through the opaque door I had studied for months and introduced myself. I wanted to know everything about how Lauren and Max got to this point and their commitment to education that motivated them to keep going. This is what they had to say:
What were some of the biggest hurdles you both faced while opening Blue Violets?
Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle we faced was the backlash our application received from a very small but very wealthy group of individuals. That backlash resulted in the City Council hastily changing its cannabis zoning law - severely limiting cannabis zoning in Hoboken - while we and other applicants were already halfway through the approval process.
A majority of the Council believed we would be “grandfathered” from the law change, but this was challenged in court by those wealthy residents. We actually lost that case at trial, but we appealed the decision, and the appellate court granted a “stay” of the trial decision while it reviewed the case in full, so the stay allowed us to continue on and open.
We are still waiting for the appellate court to render a full decision in our case. If it goes against us, we will need to close. We’ve been urging the City to change the law back to what it was when we started the process, but it’s tough to get political momentum. Unfortunately for us, this saga is well documented through some local publications, so we’ll share some prior writing for more detail( Read more about Blue Violet’s legal battle)
It’s difficult enough for anyone to open a cannabis dispensary, and these extra legal issues would have been difficult to navigate for even large, multi-million dollar corporations. We are just a young couple with no investors, so it became a David vs. Goliath story that we never asked for or wanted.
How did you come up with the name "Blue Violets" for your dispensary?
It’s New Jersey’s state flower! We knew we really wanted to focus on cannabis terpenes in our store, so we wanted a name that was evocative of flowers and botanicals. When we saw New Jersey’s state flower is the blue violet, it just felt right.
Lauren, can you talk about your journey from being a nurse to becoming a co-owner of a cannabis dispensary? Have you faced any criticism or skepticism from your peers in the medical field for promoting cannabis?
Lauren: Sure! I’ve been practicing as a Nurse since 2012.
Max and I met in undergraduate in 2008 and have always talked about opening up a business together; the first few ideas included opening and operating a bubble tea cafe to a child care facility or Private Practice office. I had visions of pursuing my Master’s Degree and becoming a Nurse Practitioner.
My experience with cannabis at this point was limited and narrowed to the Reaganisms and “War on Drugs” propaganda. As a child in the early 1990s, my mother was a single mom to myself and my younger brother and worked as a restaurant hostess and bartender. There, her boss had a small office which I can remember sitting in with him while he was breaking apart cannabis flower with his fingers, and rolled his own “cigarette” in front of us. I can distinctly remember the smell being different than any other cigarette smoke I had been around at that point. I still can remember how angry my mother got, and later that evening, he was aggressively drunk, chucking drinking glasses at her while closing up, all right in front of me and my brother.
During college, I was more generally exposed to cannabis socially and through Max. Dec 2011 was the first time I tried smoking with Max. I don’t really remember “the high,” but I was more open to experiencing it myself. In 2012, as a new nurse, I had administered Marinol, the pharmaceutical synthetic version of THC that was being given to cancer patients. One of the older nurses I worked with had such a disgust for the medication despite the true medical need for this patient. So, in Nursing, there is still stigma depending on the individual(s).
In 2019, I personally became a medical patient in NJ. As of 2020, I’ve been diagnosed with an inflammatory autoimmune disease that expresses itself in my spine, connective tissue, and surrounding areas.
In 2020, NJ was legalizing cannabis recreationally. Max is a regulatory lawyer by practice and felt we could navigate the licensure process with his experience and guidance. We talked about it and decided to take things one step at a time.
As a nurse, I see the medicinal benefits of cannabis over drugs such as opioids, and it's been too long demonized as if it were crack cocaine or heroin.
How do you address any misconceptions or concerns that medical professionals might have about cannabis?
Lauren: For the most part, other medical professionals are surprised that I am a consumer. I break their stigmatized idea of what “a stoner” looks like to them. When they find out I have an autoimmune condition, and it helps with some of my symptom management, they are sympathetic and curious. They start to change their minds a little bit about consumption.
One of the standout differences at Blue Violets is your emphasis on terpene education. Why is terpene education so important to Blue Violets?
Our view is that terpenes are a better choice factor for our customers because they’re an overall better indicator of quality and can also really impact the consumer’s experience.
Terpenes are essential oils and they’re found in all botanical life, including in cannabis. But cannabis is unique because it can exhibit hundreds of different types of terpenes. Like lavender oil or tea tree oil, terpenes are used to provide flavor and scents. So first and foremost, they give each cannabis product its distinct taste and smell, which for a lot of consumers is very important.
Terpenes have also been researched a lot, and it's been shown that, by themselves, some can help with things like pain and anxiety. But more recent studies have also shown that cannabis terpenes may also be responsible for the different effects of each cannabis strain through something known as the “entourage effect.”
For example, one cannabis synergy study investigated how terpenes might affect the way THC interacts with the body’s CB1 receptors in the endocannabinoid system. The study’s CB1 receptor measurements revealed strong evidence in favor of the entourage effect:
All terpenes individually activated CB1 receptors at about 10% to 50% of THC's activity.
Terpenes combined with THC significantly increased CB1 receptor activity compared to THC alone.
Synergetic receptor activation was several times higher than THC alone in several cases.
A more recent study in October 2023 also confirmed the same, with key findings suggesting that whole plant, full-spectrum products can produce a statistically significant faster onset and more than double the psychoactive experience than distillate products with comparable THC potencies due to the “entourage effect,” or presence of additional whole plant compounds like phytocannabinoids and terpenes.
And not only does the research support this theory more and more, but our own real-life experience matches with these findings as well: products that are full spectrum or contain more terpenes tend to produce better and more varied cannabis experiences, and certain terpenes create certain experiences when they’re found in cannabis, and we want to share that knowledge with our customers. That’s why it was important for us to create the color-coded ‘terpene bouquets’ that we have on our menu, so we can easily showcase the terpenes in a way customers can quickly learn.
What do you think is the most significant misconception about cannabis that needs to be addressed?
Unfortunately, there are still people out there who believe cannabis will bring crime to their neighborhoods. They still believe the propaganda and scare tactics that were sold to Americans about cannabis as part of the War on Drugs. They don’t see the reality that cannabis stores are just like any other store, and cannabis is very popular among all types of people - our customers are just their family, friends, and neighbors.
What future plans or initiatives do you have for Blue Violets to further enhance customer experience and education?
We have so many plans! But our number one priority right now is to onboard some staff to help us out in the store, which will also give us some time back to work on other initiatives. We do want to bring more education to our customers through our in-store experience, through social media, and on our menu. We also have a long way to go with the aesthetics of our store, but we’re making progress bit by bit.
We definitely want to host some events throughout Hoboken as well, like some social events where cannabis is a component but not necessarily the focus (think arts & crafts events with cannabis!). Unfortunately, because of the lawsuit, we didn’t have the time or money to invest in our opening in the way we really wanted to, but we’re slowly getting there.
We’ll end on a fun one. What’s your favorite strain right now, and why?
Lauren: Obama Runtz by Garden Greens! It was super sweet, it had a good amount of linalool and limonene in the terpene profile. It was great for couch cuddles (menu image with terps included below)
Max: Rythm’s Black Afghan. It had a ton of myrcene, along with its minor terps like pinene and ocimene it created a really funky smell, almost like cat urine. And the effects were super relaxing and sedating (menu image with terps included below)
