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Yampa — The medical marijuana dispensary in Yampa doesn’t have any signs to advertise its presence other than a piece of paper taped to the inside of the glass door. Its opening in December wasn’t surrounded by controversy and public debate, and there are still no local laws governing its operation. And inside the small, one-room business, the smell of coffee, not marijuana, permeates the room thanks to an antique coffee roaster that dominates the space, nearly hiding the small glass cabinet filled with tinctures and marijuana.

J-Jay Johnson, the owner of LMS Dispensary, said he thinks the town appreciates the low-key approach he’s taken to opening the business on the main street in town and that he still hasn’t advertised beyond a few fliers he handed out around town. Even so, he said the business is just about at capacity with eight to 10 regular customers, who don’t fit the typical stereotypes.

Johnson focuses on tinctures — liquids with the distilled THC from marijuana — that he said don’t get the user high but do relieve pain. “Don’t get high, get healthy,” is the motto Johnson uses for the business, promoting the pain-relieving properties more than the mind-altering. He said that strategy also serves him well with his elderly customers, who make up the bulk of his customer base.

“A lot of people are afraid of being high,” he said, sitting on the lone couch in the dispensary. “They’ve been told their whole life that something bad will happen.”

Johnson said he created his tinctures using a special method. He lists all the ingredients on the bottles, but the way he extracts the THC remains a trade secret. One doesn’t have any high, he said, and the other creates a small buzz. Both have proven more popular than regular marijuana with older customers.

Johnson operates the dispensary in the Leisure Mountain Studio building he owns with his wife. Johnson sculpts black and white porcelain pieces for the studio, and his wife runs and operates the café and studio. The couple still uses the coffee roaster in the dispensary for the café.

Taking a break from his sculptures, Johnson decided to open the dispensary to help other people with pain. As a Vietnam War veteran, Johnson said he has had chronic problems for years. He said that in 1993, a doctor even told him to put his affairs in order because he didn’t have long to live.

Now, he’s eschewed traditional medicine in favor of homemade tinctures and brownies, and homegrown hashish and marijuana. And he wants to spread the health he’s found. He said he’s not operating the dispensary for love of money, but to help others.

Town response

The town of Yampa, unlike Oak Creek and Steamboat Springs, has not enacted any laws to govern the dispensary, and town leaders say they have no desire to do that.

Mayor Bruce Pitts said the Yampa Town Board was wary to do anything until state laws are clarified.

“As the board goes, we’re not going to do anything until the legislature figures out what they’re going to do with it,” he said.

Pitts said many of the board members think of the dispensary as another business in town and a possible source of revenue that they don’t want to stop.

Towns can’t legally ban dispensaries, but they can enact regulations. The Oak Creek Town Board and Steamboat Springs City Council required extra security and cameras on the sites and limited how the businesses could be advertised.

The state is working on more legislation, and House Bill 1284 is working its way through the legislature. That bill proposes new regulations for dispensaries and would allow communities to ban dispensaries altogether.

But in Yampa, the town has shown patience for Johnson’s business, and his word-of-mouth approach has led to a list of potential customers. Johnson said a quarter of them do not smoke at all but ingest the marijuana in other ways.

“I’m trying to reach the people who are in an older crowd who have been told their whole life it’s a bad thing,” he said. “They can do it without uncomfortableness of paranoia and being high.”