A pub crawl can have its moments, but since I moved to west coast America I much prefer a cannabis dispensary crawl

Right now we’re talking high-end veg. I’m in a place called The Leaf in Palm Desert, the Beverly Hills of the greater Palm Springs area. We’re a stone’s throw from Louis Vuitton and Gucci and the store feels more like the beauty department of London’s Selfridges. In a nearby aisle, a man in his sixties who looks like he’s just walked off a golf course is cross-examining a “budtender” about the level of high fructose corn syrup in the “gummies” – popular marijuana-infused sweets. She’s nodding understandingly and suggesting he tries tinctures instead: “No sugar and they work quick. You feel the shift in around five minutes.” Farther down, an elegant elderly woman is asking about cannabis creams for her arthritis.

My own budtender is called Jeannie, a cheerful young Hispanic woman who takes me past glittering cabinets containing a variety of edibles, vaporisers, tinctures, creams, pre-rolls and “flower”, as cannabis is known in its raw state. This being California, the land of illusion and slick marketing, it’s not immediately clear what a lot of these colourful goodies are. They have the mystique of a box of 1970s home fireworks but luckily Jeannie is what they call a “cannasseur” and explains the merits of the assorted catherine wheels, roman candles and sparklers before us. We start at the cannabis-infused beverage section which contains mostly vegan, non-gluten, non-GMO products with childproof caps and around 10mg of THC – the part of the weed plant that gets you high. Then we’re onto the “pre-rolls” (pre-rolled joints), the fast food of the cannabis world. A bijou candy-coloured pack called Dizzies promises “an explosion of fun and flavor that will keep you spinning”. The high-end Lowell Farms brand boasts biodegradable filters with a Latin inscription on the box and gentleman’s-club packaging, as if they’re trying to appeal to Winston Churchill. Gummies are arranged on expertly-lit shelves like displays in an art gallery, each brand’s fruity flavour promising a niche altered state ranging from “chill” and “social” to “uplifting” and “bliss”.

These designer marijuana stores remind me how California can feel like living in the future

These designer marijuana stores remind me how California can feel like living in the future. Weed is now legal for recreational use in 24 US states and permitted for medical use in 38 (though in Nebraska or Idaho you’ll likely get jail time if you’re apprehended with any of this stuff, especially if you aren’t white). In Europe, only Germany has followed the lead of Netherlands, Malta and Luxembourg, by legalising cannabis on 1 April this year. The UK continues in the dark ages, where it’s still a Class B drug for which the maximum penalty for possession is five years in prison or a fine of £2,500. London mayor Sadiq Khan looked open to change when he visited a California marijuana farm in 2022 but then he got cold feet. Perhaps it’s because the alcohol lobby is so strong in the UK, though how many stoners were caught trying to burn down a mosque this summer?

My next stop is in Rat Pack central, Palm Springs. It’s a lounge called Four Twenty Bank where you are actually allowed to consume your fireworks (in the weed boutiques, you can only buy.) Alongside the glittering cabinets, Four Twenty Bank is filled with games rooms, leopard print couches, a live music stage and a “full service dab bar”. I observe a head of dark hair falling over a glass pipe or “dab rig”. This is a type of heated water bong using concentrated forms of cannabis with names like “wax”, “shatter” and “diamonds”. Dabs are for people they term “hard hitters”. The dark head comes up coughing from the pipe with a goofy smile on her face and I recognise my friend from Joshua Tree, the cannabis celebrity Sailene Ossman. Back in the 1990s, Sailene created California’s first all-female cannabis delivery service. She also had a cooking show on Snoop Dogg’s weed channel, Merry Jane. “Oh my goodness, that’s so delicious, thank you,” she effuses to the budtender, with the air of Marilyn Monroe (a regular visitor to Palm Springs) thanking a waiter for a champagne cocktail.

Rolling Stone dubbed Sailene “the cheery feminist cannabis guru of Southern California” though she describes herself as a “hog” with weed. I’m surprised when she tells me the scene here has become a “shit show”, explaining “California used to be the mecca of cannabis but since it went recreational in 2016, it’s been squeezed down by corporations.” Many of the dispensary licences were supposed to go to people of colour such as herself, some of whom had served jail time for possession. But instead, they went to “white fucking guys that are hedge fund dudes who have no relationship to the plant. They’re drinkers, they’re not smokers. They’re just here for the almighty dollar.” Sailene is good at finding loopholes, though. She now runs an exotic coffee shop in Joshua Tree called Brewja Elixir. One of her bestsellers is the Mind’s Eye Latte containing blue lotus flower that will open your third eye (come on, Starbucks.) She also offers a range of gummies containing a compound in the cannabis plant called Delta 8, which gives you a high but was never made illegal in the US.

Back at Four Twenty Bank, the Rover’s Return of the cannabis world, I spy my charismatic Puerto Rican artist friend Miguel relaxing on a couch. Thirty-odd years ago, at the age of 21, Miguel jumped off a five-storey building in Boston (it’s a difficult story, involving a traumatic love affair, years of homophobic bullying and a recent HIV diagnosis) He lost both legs under the knees, although he walks well now on his prosthetic poles in sneakers. He’s surprised when I tell him weed is still illegal in the UK. “Tell your prime minister of England that the best thing of having legally-accessible cannabis is that I am not made to feel like a delinquent any more,” he says. “[It’s] one thing less to worry about when I’m medicating this horrendous physical pain.”

My prime minister might also want to think about the power of education in the minds of nervous would-be consumers, I reflect afterwards. A lot of my mum friends think legality would mean more of the ridiculous-strength skunk of dubious origin that their kids are all smoking. Yet to me legalisation means you know what you’re getting and most Californians are horrified at the idea of putting tobacco in a joint as we do in Europe. Meanwhile, people are still using weed in the UK, only they’re not paying tax on it (California’s 1000-plus cannabis dispensaries provided nearly $1.1 billion in state tax revenue in 2023.) I have a friend in Liverpool with degenerative spine disease who buys gummies from a secret Scouse hot line because she doesn’t want to get into opiates. “But they taste like tar, lover,” she laments to me. “And it’s not a nice high.” She got into the California ones on a recent holiday, because they made her feel “beautiful – as if I’m floating”. Alas, the only option available to British fellow-sufferers without her illicit contacts is to pickle their livers with alcohol or try their luck with NHS painkillers.

I float my way out of Four Twenty Bank and head to Desert Hot Springs, an old spa town and the cheapo cousin of nearby Palm Springs, to make a couple more stops. One of my favourite things when visiting cannabis dispensaries is the conversations I have with the budtenders and customers. There seems to be more bonding and emotional frankness when you’re stoned. At IVTHC, the 50-something budtender is talking about the elections. He’s going to vote, but not for Kamala because of her “woke bullshit”, adding “what she did to this state is horrible”. Some small LA business owners put planters in front of their stores to stop homeless encampments, he explains, but the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, ordered the planters to be removed. “What does that tell you about their attitude to small business?” Everyone in the store vibes with him.

At Green Pearl Organics, 24-year-old Dylan seems keener to talk about the elections than his store’s special offers (which include Munchy Mondays, Wax Wednesdays and Doobie Saturdays). Dylan is knowledgeable but cynical about the US voting system. “You vote when you move to the state,” he says, adding that red states will always be red and blue states blue and the only fun is if you reside in a swing state. He lives in solidly democratic Washington state and is in California right now to look after his sick grandma. “But what if every vote did count?” I ask. He hesitates. “Eight years ago, life was pretty fucking safe. There was no wars going on. And guess who was president? A Republican.”

My cannabis crawl ends at my favourite store, Coughie Shop. They have a happy hour at 4.20 pm (420 is cannabis culture slang for weed). A spinning wheel on the counter offers prizes including a water bong, a rolling tray, a bandana and a joint. As I spin the wheel, I imagine one of the prizes being the re-enactment of a dodgy back-alley weed deal. But instead I win a glass ashtray with the cartoon face of someone having a bad trip at the bottom. I’m so California sober at this point that I ask the female budtender if she thinks politicians would get on better if they got stoned together. “People definitely connect more when they’re on weed,” she reflects, “but then again, an asshole’s an asshole even if they’re high.”

Stephanie Theobald is an author and journalist known for her work around alternative feminism and latterly, living in a cave. She lives near Joshua Tree, California. Her road trip memoir “Sex Drive” is out now in paperback