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Marijuana is legal in California now. Will an Uber-for-pot gold rush follow?

Starting the year off on a high note.

Marijuana plants
Marijuana plants
Ethan Miller / Getty

Starting today, Jan. 1, permitted businesses across California will be legally allowed to sell marijuana to people age 21 and over — the result of a 2016 ballot initiative, Proposition 64.

The state’s move away from (ostensibly) requiring a doctor’s recommendation to buy pot from a dispensary is good news for companies like Eaze, which lets users order drug deliveries through an app. The company’s VP of marketing, Jamie Feaster, told Recode via email that orders from baby boomers and women have spiked in the past year, which they believe indicates growing comfort with recreational marijuana use among a broader swath of the population.

Last year, former Eaze CEO Keith McCarty came on Too Embarrassed to Ask to talk about how the company’s pot deliveries worked then. Feaster said the company now accepts more forms of payment than just cash, but still does not employ delivery drivers directly; instead, as McCarty described in 2016, they are still all employees of the dispensaries with which Eaze partners:

Other companies seem likely to follow if, indeed, a greater number of consumers take up smoking and find they enjoy it. Gunner Winston, the CEO of Dosist — which makes a vaporizer pen for cannabis — says the company expects to grow as people start to see the drug through the lens of general wellness.

“We expect that as more and more people understand the health benefits of cannabis and its role as a wellness tool, we will see a move toward increased interest and acceptance and a departure from the stigma that has surrounded the plant for so long,” Winston said.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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