Sometimes if you fall in love with a small town, you might take home a souvenir. Well, one cannabis company loved the tiny California town of Nipton (pop. 20) so much that they decided to take home the entire thing.
That’s right. American Green, Inc. announced on Thursday that they bought all 120 acres of Nipton lock, stock, and barrel for $5 million. And they want you to go there.
The company, which claims (and who are we to argue?) that they are “the first company to buy an entire town for the purpose of capitalizing on the emerging cannabis tourism industry,” wants to turn Nipton into “the country’s first energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination.”
The plan is to make “cannabis-based products” in Nipton, and there are aims to grow weed there down the line. To start off, the company is going to bottle the town’s water, infuse it with the cannabinoid CBD (which doesn’t get you high, but is supposed to reduce pain and inflammation), and sell it.
American Green plans on spending another $2.5 million to renovate Nipton, and will focus on using renewable energy. Project manager Stephen Sherin told Bloomberg that they wanted to set an example.
“We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?'” he said. He explained that the goal was to “create a community that is accepting and understanding” about marijuana use.
The company’s PR stunt announcement inspired investors, at least. The stock price went up by 40% on Thursday, though it’s still trading for a fraction of a cent per share.
