Photography by Kathy Tran
The name is in your face on purpose.
“I’m the last person you would ever think would be involved with cannabis,” says April Watson, who has a master’s degree in public health and is working on a doctorate.
She’s the owner of The Weed Spot in the Bishop Arts District.
The boutique at 502 N. Madison Ave. looks like a typical marijuana dispensary that can be found wherever weed is legal.
Here, everything is above board, in line with Texas law, which allows certain types of cannabis, including CBD, which has no psychoactive effects, and delta 8, which does but is still chemically different enough from marijuana to be legal.
Watson is not a cannabis user herself, but she named her store The Weed Spot because she understands the benefits of it, and she wants to exorcise its stigma.
Her introduction to CBD came about six years ago when her son, who is on the autism spectrum, was prescribed Ritalin. She says the medication made her son dispassionate and caused insomnia.
“I didn’t like what it did to him,” she says.
A friend suggested CBD gummies, which helped decrease his anxiety, increase his focus and aid sleep, she says. There were no side effects.
Watson was already an entrepreneur. A former teacher and administrator with Dallas ISD, she became a diagnostician, hired to diagnose intellectual and mental disabilities in children. She also owns a rehabilitation clinic in Oak Cliff, Ability Solutions, which helps clients receiving social security disability to qualify for jobs.
Two years ago, she found out that her nephew had been using Xanax to treat anxiety, and she tried to get him to convert to CBD. He ended up overdosing on Percocet and Xanax, and he died.
Soon after, she opened The Weed Spot.
“A weed is something that grows and thrives in places where it’s not wanted,” she says. “I want to start having conversations about why we’re so afraid of cannabis.”
Watson, 37, was hesitant to sell hemp flowers at first because it seemed less medical to her than, say, gummies or oils. She’s never smoked or done any illegal drugs, she says.
Then one of her customers, who is a nurse, told her that smoking can be the quickest way to get CBD into the bloodstream to treat pain.
CBD is used for all sorts of ailments, mental and physical, and some people partake for sports recovery or purely relaxation.
While cannabis is no cure-all, it also isn’t deadly the way some pharmaceuticals can be.
“You may take too much and not feel very well and wish you hadn’t done that, but it’s not going to kill you,” Watson says.
All of the cannabis products at The Weed Spot are from hemp grown in the United States, Watson says. Most of it is sourced from small farms and manufacturers, and she says it’s important to her for customers to know where the products are coming from.
The Weed Spot also makes CBD lattes, which cost $7-$8.
The shop hosts occasional open-mic nights and has DJs every Saturday. There’s a lounge area with board games and comfy sofas, plus murals depicting weed aficionados Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg and Cheech and Chong, by Dallas artist Theo Ponchavelli.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday
