There's a list making the rounds online of the 50 best "weed cities" in the country. It's part of what is being called a study, put together by real estate website realestatewitch.com, by the outlets that have picked up the story. Seattle, Washington's only representative, was ranked ninth nationally. Denver, where the first legal markets in the country opened nearly a decade ago, took the top spot.
Spokane is nowhere on the list.
Of the 50 cities listed in the so-called study, recreational cannabis is illegal in 29 and medical marijuana is illegal in 12. The list is bad. Indianapolis is not a better weed city than Spokane. That said, the criteria used to determine the list are, mostly, pretty interesting, so we applied them to Spokane.
One of the heavily weighted criteria used is the average price for an ounce of high-quality cannabis, per priceofweed.com. For Spokane, that average is $226.74, which puts Spokane third cheapest among the 50 cities, behind only Sacramento ($212) and Portland ($213).
Another criteria is the number of dispensaries per 100,000 residents. After all, it makes sense that a city with a good, even thriving, cannabis scene would be home to numerous stores — though having none was apparently not a disqualifier. Spokane is home to 21 licensed dispensaries within city limits. With a population according to the Census Bureau of 228,989, that means there are 9.17 dispensaries per 100,000 residents of the city. Of the cities listed, only Denver (9.8 per 100,000) can boast more.
If you expand beyond the city limits and go countywide, where there are 33 dispensaries and a population of 546,040, the number falls to 6.04 per 100,000 residents. If you use that instead, Spokane plummets all the way to third, behind only Denver and Portland (7.9 per 100,000).
The people behind the purported study also looked into the number of hiking trails around a city, because stoners like to smoke in nature. Well, maybe they thought Spokane paved over all of its trails after the city gave up on the "Near Nature, Near Perfect" ad campaign. They also looked into the number of Taco Bell locations in each city, because what's a story about stoners without falling back on stereotypes, right?
If you're wondering, Spokane would be tied for 16th in that category, but you deserve better munchies than that. ♦
