State’s biggest marijuana ‘dealer’ – daughter of former Montgomery County sheriff – is ‘Queen of Cannabis’
She learned to navigate the maze of retail sales from one of the most prominent salesman in the region — Al Boscov. From there, Chris Visco said, she has taught serial killers how to make lamps, run several political campaigns, and operated a bakery.
Now, Visco, the daughter of the late John P. Durante, a former sheriff of Montgomery County, is Pennsylvania’s dominant retailer of medical marijuana. The 47-year-old mother of three is the cofounder and CEO of TerraVida Holistic Centers, a chain of three cannabis dispensaries scattered across the Philadelphia suburbs, including Sellersville and Abington, writes Sam Wood in philly.com.
“I am the biggest [legal] weed dealer in the state,” Visco said, with customary bravado. Her claim is supported by the state’s medical-marijuana growers.
“We sell between 30 and 40 pounds of [marijuana] flower a month,” she said. “Then there’s the concentrates and other products. I’ve had over 20,000 unique patients who have walked through the doors since we opened in February. And the business is still growing.”
She’s also a patient. Visco said cannabis products have been good for her migraines and insomnia. She uses the Pineapple Express strain for her headaches. And each night, an hour before bed, she takes a 10 mg THC capsule that she maintains had increased the number of hours she can sleep from three hours to between five and six. “It’s really worked for me,” she said.
Visco has taken an unorthodox route to the top of the Keystone State’s cannabis industry. She presides over an expanding chain — she hopes to open six more spa-like dispensaries next year — and employs nearly 80 people.
Visco admits to smoking “lots of marijuana” back when she was a student at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School and at Drexel University.
“I went to a lot of [Grateful] Dead shows,” she said. “I was a big smoker when I was a teenager.”
After graduating with a degree in psychology from Drexel, she was hired at Boscov’s department stores as a gift department manager. She rapidly rose through the ranks and became a star buyer. “I was promoted because I was aggressive and made sure I was always in the right place at the right time.”
That became her template.
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