Inside Utah’s medical marijuana program

Added on 28 July 2023

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In a nondescript building in an industrial section of South Salt Lake, there’s a big bag of weed labeled Blue Dream — several bags, actually — stored in large Igloo coolers in a chilly room called the vault.

Meticulously cultivated on a former turkey farm in Sanpete County, the hand-trimmed marijuana buds will be machine-dropped into pouches containing 3.5 grams of the classic cannabis strain. A courier will deliver the packets to the Dragonfly Wellness pharmacy in Salt Lake City to be sold under its Betty label for $38 a pop.

Known to have powerful uplifting effects that can reduce pain and enhance the appetite, Blue Dream has a fruity taste with hints of cinnamon and pine, according to the Dragonfly website. It contains 18.25% tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the major psychoactive component in cannabis, and 20.26% of THCA, the most abundant nonpsychoactive cannabinoid found in the plant.

One of Utah’s nearly 72,000 medical cannabis cardholders will eventually buy the pouch of flower and — if used legally under Utah law — grind it into a dry herb vaporizer to inhale as a treatment for pain, inflammation or depression. The state prohibits using an open flame to heat marijuana to smoke medicinally or recreationally.

Photo: Taylor Constantine, Dragonfly director of research and development and extraction, shows a large bag of Strawberry Kush cannabis buds at the Dragonfly processing plant in South Salt Lake on Friday, March 24, 2023.© Kristin Murphy, Deseret News.

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