Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
In a city and region he says is full of prescription pill and bath salt abusers, Captain Joint sees himself as a culture warrior.
Sometimes he sees young people coming into his family’s downtown Old Town shop, the Captain’s Joint, gloating about nights of heavy drinking or drug abuse.
Fair warning: If he hears it, he tries to stop it in its tracks for the sake of “education.”
“Here at the shop, we like to put out a strong anti-drug message,” Captain Joint said. “We all know Mom and Dad are full of s–t. The cool guy at the head shop — they’ll listen to him.”
His substance of choice, if you couldn’t guess, is marijuana.
“The most dangerous thing about pot is getting caught with it in your pocket,” he said. “Hard drugs are no fun.
The 57-year-old captain — who says more people know him as Captain Joint than by his real name, David Bunn — is mostly known for selling marijuana memorabilia, including T-shirts, and glass pipes used to smoke marijuana and tobacco.
There are some bigger-ticket items, too, including elaborate hookahs, instruments for smoking that cool smoke with water, making it more palatable. Tobacco smoked in a hookah is called shisha, but hookahs aren’t just used for tobacco.
“The hookahs are really popular,” he said. “I usually use pot and a blowtorch, but that’s just me.”
If you don’t know how to use them, that’s fine. Bunn keeps a ten-step guide to using hookahs behind the register.
And he’s not shy about promoting his character: For the bearded man’s biggest fan, he also sells Captain Joint bobblehead dolls.
The captain doll wears a top hat and a jacket with stars and stripes. The white American stars on the hat have been changed to marijuana leaves, and he stands next to a marijuana plant, holding a marijuana pipe nearly as tall as he.
It’s possible President Obama has a doll — Bunn said he sent one the president’s way after the commander-in-chief’s inauguration. He doesn’t know if it’s on the Oval Office’s Resolute desk.
“I got my special gift from the White House,” he said. “It looked an awful lot like a form letter.”
He also rolls marijuana cigarettes, or joints — the inspiration for his moniker — in the store, but that’s no affront to state law.
Though Bunn has disobeyed marijuana laws for decades, he’s now legal — a patient under Maine’s medical marijuana because of a long list of painful conditions. Under state law, he can possess and use 5 ounces of marijuana per month. In the eyes of federal law, marijuana is still illegal in all cases.
In January 2003, High Times, a magazine claiming on its website to be the “voice of the marijuana community,” named Bunn “Freedom Fighter of the Month,” something he often mentions in conversation. He has been fighting for legalization of the plant since the 1970s.
He said he came to Maine approximately five years ago because of lax laws and a medical marijuana program in its infancy. Maine first legalized medical marijuana in 1999, but it wasn’t until 2009 that voters set up a distribution method via referendum.
University of Maine students help sustain the store, Bunn said. Though the business doesn’t “live or die” with them, he says business spikes when school is in session.
The students who come in are “average, average-looking and clean-cut,” according to Bunn. For him, it represents the mainstreaming of marijuana.
He said even high-schoolers and their parents come through the doors.
“On graduation, I had fathers coming in to buy bongs because their kids made the honor roll,” he said. “Not all of this, obviously, is medical.”
But don’t use “the ‘B’ word” in the shop. Prominently displayed signs in the store say the many artisan pipes of all shapes and sizes are for tobacco use only.
Problems with police have been nonexistent. In March, 22-year-old Brian Corvino of Old Town was arrested after a rash of Old Town break-ins and thefts. $4,000 in merchandise, mostly pipes, were taken from the shop, most of which was recovered.
Old Town Police Chief Don O’Halloran said his department has “not had any problems” with the store.
“There were some comments and complaints [when it opened], but it was all legit, so it’s not up for us to say anything,” he said.
The shop has been open since 2010 and added the Star Café earlier this month. Intern Laura Wolfson, a sixth-year business student at UMaine, said the addition is aimed at becoming a “4/20-friendly atmosphere.”
“UMaine — it is seen as a big party school,” she said. “You’re going to come in here, you’re going to hang out with good people, and you’re going to have some fun.”
On the menu are various cannabis-inspired products — hemp coffee that has an “earthier” taste than regular brews, Amsterdam dessert waffles and marijuana leaf-shaped cookies. Most baked goods are $1, and paninis cost approximately $5.
That is, except for the “4/20 special,” a daily signature sandwich costing $4.20.
Due to its reputation, Bunn said the store does draw in people with addicting drug habits that may not include marijuana.
Wolfson said people often enter the store looking for “spice,” a synthetic drug that offers a marijuana-like high but has harmful side effects such as hallucinations, nausea and dependency.
“We tell them we don’t think it’s safe,” she said. “Another opportunity for education.”
Bunn said like other stores, his doesn’t sell pipes that can be used to smoke crack cocaine.
And, before the drug was made illegal in Maine, he said vendors offered his store bath salts — hallucinogenic, synthetic drugs that have been blamed for at least one death in Bangor.
He refused.
“I’ve hung in some pretty sketchy places,” Bunn said. “That just doesn’t sound like what I’d want to do at a party.”
Bunn said he hopes to add Wi-Fi to the store soon, along with “stoner trivia nights” to attract more people.
Right now, he said, all family employees, including his wife, Judy, and their 22-year-old son, Cougar, aren’t collecting salary.
And Cougar, also a medical marijuana patient, is heir apparent to the store — and perhaps his father’s legacy.
“Captain Joint’s son has ‘Cannabis Kid’ tattooed on his stomach,” Bunn said. “What does that tell you?”
Bangor Daily News