Owners of a landmark Parkside drugstore hope to make marijuana – an old-time remedy – new again, with a medical cannabis dispensary at their historic Bell Rexall Pharmacy.
If pharmacist Anthony Minniti gets a state license to sell medicinal cannabis, Bell Rexall would open its doors to a whole new customer-base and attract more attention to other nearby businesses at Haddon and Kaighn avenues.
The impetus for Minniti’s plan: A glass bottle of “cannabis tincture” apparently left behind by Henry Bellitz, who opened that drugstore in 1931. Apothecaries routinely made liquid extracts from hemp plants – called tinctures – as a remedy for various ailments from the 1850s until the 1940s.
Minniti found the small apothecary bottle during past renovations to the drugstore that he and his sister, Marian Morton, have owned since 1997. It inspired him to create a pharmacy-based model for medical marijuana card holders.
Like other New Jersey dispensaries, Bell Rexall will likely sell a variety of large and small bud flowers, pre-rolls, topicals, vape cartridges, lozenges and other edibles. But, Minniti says final product choice have not been made yet.