Budtenders and young cannabis users describe harm reduction in mock dispensary study

Cannabis retail staff and young adult consumers describe harm reduction in noticeably different terms, according to a mixed methods study conducted in a mock dispensary environment and published in Harm Reduction Journal. The research, shared early as a peer-reviewed accepted manuscript with a permanent DOI, set out to determine whether dispensary staff actually present harm reduction strategies to customers, a question the authors note has remained unclear even as retail cannabis has expanded dramatically across the United States.

The scale of the retail market provides the backdrop for the study. As of 2024, there were approximately 15,000 cannabis dispensaries across the U.S., and recreational cannabis alone generated 32 billion dollars in sales that year, a figure the researchers cite as evidence of sustained consumer demand from retail outlets. At the same time, high frequency of cannabis use is associated with adverse physical, mental, and interpersonal consequences, which is precisely the risk profile that harm reduction approaches aim to moderate.

The study focused on protective behavioral strategies, defined in the paper as harm reduction techniques that are used before, after, or during use and that may reduce a person’s experience of cannabis-related consequences. Because consumers often seek and receive advice from dispensary staff during visits, the retail counter represents a plausible point of contact for such strategies, yet the authors emphasize that it has been unclear which strategies, if any, staff present to customers in these environments.

To examine this, the researchers recruited two separate groups: twenty budtenders and sixty young adult cannabis users aged 21 to 30. The two groups participated separately in semi-structured interviews conducted in a mock dispensary environment, a design that allowed participants to discuss sales interactions and product guidance in a setting modeled on real retail conditions without involving actual transactions.

Analysis combined thematic analysis of the interviews with survey data. Among the budtenders, three harm reduction themes emerged relating to their work: sales methodology, advice about use behavior, and establishing budtender-customer relationships. These themes suggest that staff frame harm reduction partly through how they sell and partly through the advisory and relational roles they adopt with customers during dispensary visits.

The young adult interviews produced a distinct set of themes. Consumers described avoiding specific products, limiting overconsumption, and prioritizing purchases associated with positive use experiences. Taken together, the two sets of themes indicate that staff-side messaging and consumer-side practices do not map one-to-one onto each other, which is part of why the authors argue that the retail environment warrants closer study.

The authors position these findings as a resource for researchers and policymakers who want to better understand harm reduction messaging within retail cannabis environments. In their view, understanding what is actually communicated at the counter can help address potential misinformation related to harm reduction and identify content areas for future trainings and science-based educational materials.

The stated goal of such materials is practical: to help consumers implement harm reduction strategies that will work best for them if they choose to use cannabis. Because the study is qualitative and exploratory in nature, based on interviews with a limited sample in a simulated setting, the themes it reports describe what these particular budtenders and young adults said rather than measuring how often any strategy is delivered or used in real dispensaries. The authors present the results as a foundation for understanding messaging in retail cannabis environments, not as evidence about the effectiveness of any specific intervention.

With the legal cannabis retail sector continuing to grow, the study offers an early, structured look at the conversations happening across the counter. It documents that budtenders see themselves as sources of use-related advice and relationship-building, and that young adult consumers arrive with their own harm reduction repertoires, from product avoidance to overconsumption limits. The gap between those two perspectives, the researchers suggest, is where future training and educational content may find its most useful targets.

Subject of Research: Harm reduction messaging and strategies reported by cannabis dispensary staff and young adult consumers in a mock dispensary study

Article Title: Harm reduction perceptions among budtenders & young adults in a mock dispensary environment

Article References: Shute, I. M., Brown, M. E., Gray, B., Prince, M. A., Sedano, A., Eamer, G., Houghton, S., Monterosso, J., & Pedersen, E. R. (2026). Harm reduction perceptions among budtenders & young adults in a mock dispensary environment. Harm Reduction Journal. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-026-01544-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12954-026-01544-5

Keywords: cannabis, dispensaries, budtenders, harm reduction, protective behavioral strategies, young adults, mock dispensary, thematic analysis, mixed methods, cannabis retail, Harm, reduction