The Apothecarium Dispensary of Salisbury (formerly Peninsula Alternative Health) — Local services in Salisbury

I’ve been a regular customer since 2021 and they have COMPLETELY gone downhill since recreational became legal, ownership changed, and they half-heartedly tried to rebrand themselves from “Peninsula Alternative Health” to the unnecessarily overcomplicated “The Apothecarium Dispensary of Salisbury.”

First of all, deceptively switching the reward system to make existing points regular patients had already saved WAY less valuable without prior warning of this change was just scummy. That’s when I knew this place was on the downhill as the old owners would’ve never done something so consequential without notifying customers beforehand.

Second and most importantly, not prioritizing medical patients over recreational customers is just morally and ethically wrong. It’s LITERALLY in the title.

“MEDICAL PATIENT”

“RECREATIONAL USER”

I get that a recreational customer might have been waiting in line before a medical customer arrives but one of these two customers has been prescribed this as medication by a licensed physician and has been legally recognized by the state of Maryland as a legitimate patient in need of this. The second customer just wants it.

If a recreational customer doesn’t get their order by the end of the day because medical patients were prioritized over them then what’s going to happen? What are they going to do? Get angry and take their business to the other nonexistent dispensaries in the city? No. They’ll probably just throw a hissy fit and come back tomorrow whilst trying to be earlier.

If a medical patient out of their medicine working multiple jobs forcing them to have to wait till the end of the day to come pick up their prescription can’t get their order once arriving ON TIME 30 minutes before your advertised closing time of 9:00pm because “the line of recreational patients waiting inside the building is already too long”, you’re forcing them to suffer just so people who don’t actually NEED it can get high.

I think new ownership seriously needs to reevaluate their methods of operation and massively reduce the variety of services they’re trying to offer. Maybe even temporarily halting some services they’re currently offering (delivery) to adequately fill staffing needs at the store. I believe previous ownership made the naive decision to start accepting recreational orders on July 1st when the building was clearly already nearing capacity with just medical patients but in my opinion, that is where they have to start if they want to fix things.

I think they recently started capping the amount of curbside orders they accept in a day but maybe instead of capping orders for all customers, they should just cap both curbside and in-store pick up orders exclusively for recreational customers. At least, for the time being. Adjusting the amount of recreational orders you accept in a day methodically so you can first increase staff and either expand your current location’s capacity, or move to a much bigger location with better parking would, in my opinion, solve most of the issues and complaints you’re currently having.

This review is already lengthy and other recent reviews have pretty much covered the gist of other problems so I won’t comment much on these other MASSIVE issues (horrendous parking, lack of room indoors, overworked and visibly exhausted so understandably disgruntled staff, lack of enough staff and registers to meet demand, lack of adequate supply, the unprecedented sketchy confiscation of your license while you have to wait in line, etc.) but hopefully the new owners actually take customer feedback seriously and start implementing some massive changes to the structure and mode of operations of this...

I wish I could add zero stars I had my first experience here as a recreational patient where I had to wait outside in the heat for 45 minutes then upon going inside I placed my order online then they moved me to a different room with chairs to wait I went to sit in a chair and “only medical patients can use the chairs” even tho there was like no one else in there I’m told I can’t sit down really? that’s absolutely ridiculous upon moving to the fulfillment room and getting to the bud tenders the lady had absolutely no idea what I had ordered even tho I ordered 30 minutes okay at this point on a computer in another room and was getting rude with me because they accidentally put me in as a medical patient and is questioning me about why I don’t remember what I ordered and why I was in as a medical patient. The experience I had at this store was the most unprofessional thing I have ever experienced I will not be back oh and also what I ordered on the computer said 36$ and then when I went back to the bud tending room they charged me 53$ and were very rude to me about the price and when I got home and looked at the receipt even my receipt said that the product was in fact 36$ so not only were you all incredibly rude you ripped me off and stole money from me.

Haha adding on to this review cause I went again and had the same exact experience but I was in town they again overcharged me for my purchase claiming it was my card charging a fee I use this card multiple times a week for weed and have used it here multiple times it never charges a fee they have over charged me every time I’ve been in here and no I don’t mean their 3.50$ card fee or tax im accounting for that I’m talking about the other random 4$ charge that they can’t explain except the last time it was 15$ extra my receipt even says I different amount then what I was charged I also ordered 2 hybrid prerolls online and when I get in the car to open them all the labels say it’s straight indica and I look it up online and sure enough it’s indica not hybrid at all and I have an awful reaction to smoking straight indica and yes of course they arnt going to exchange it at all even tho it’s their mistake. Seriously spend your money else where these people are rude have overcharged me over 20$ for products and claim not to know what’s happening and they label their products wrong and then won’t fix their mistakes you are also privy to waiting outside in the cold for hours at a time because they can’t get their crap straight. I highly recommend driving the extra 25 minutes to hitide in west ocean city where the people are nicer it doesn’t ever take more then 25 minutes they have more product and...

I’m a med patient and have been for about 4 years now. I have been to dispensaries in multiple states, as both a med patient & rec/adult use. I’ve had great experiences at other dispensaries in Ocean City. PAH (now “Apothecarium”) is almost always an unpleasant experience for me and everyone else I know. Your loyalty will not be rewarded here.

Almost every time we go, something has changed, in their policy or card fees or hours or whatever else they decide to change, and it’s something different almost every week. Parking is a nightmare, even on weekdays. The curbside is so slow and sporadically available at best. The product has gotten worse; I’ve gotten quite a few burnt/shorted/non-functional carts (on which they blamed my battery). The prices have gotten worse; $45 for a 1/8th and $50 a gram cart this far into the legal weed game is madness (and that’s tax-free medical prices!) The online system is a mess; I’ve had orders fail to come through & had to wait in line and show screenshots to prove I made an order. I’ve been told one price online and another when I pick up. The ”rewards” system is a joke. I’ve also been shortchanged more than once.

I can and have dealt with all of that for a while now, but today was the final straw. I put in an order for one single cart, at 2 pm, for a 6-6:30 pm curbside pickup. Cash only. We pull up at 6, wait at the sign for 5 minutes with no one outside. It wasn’t until a customer came and told us curbside was closed that we parked and I came in. When I walked in, I saw another patient take their ID from the employee & say they were leaving due to the 40 minute wait. I handed my ID over & told the employee I had a curbside order; they interrupted me to say curbside is closed due to the weather (it was raining but had stopped. No one had reached out about this after I ordered, nor were online orders turned off). I asked if the wait was for medical patients with a pre-order and he interrupted me again to say “Do you see this line of people?! It’s a 40 minute wait!”

Uh, no. I walked straight out and drove 30 minutes to Positive Energy. Got better product and a great experience from start to finish (all within the 30 minutes before they closed, to boot.) I will gladly drive half an hour out of town to get my medicine from respectful & organized folks at a local women-owned dispo than be treated like I have...