If you can grow weed in unoccupied commercial buildings, why not turn them into mushroom, herb and leafy vegetable etc. farms and bring back the high street greengrocer, now with zero transport requirements.
After all, the price of fresh basil and exotic (not magic) mushrooms is more than the price of unprocessed cannabis.
Small shop fronts selling the food grown upstairs would help revitalise town centres, would result in farm-to-table freshness for home cooks and because production and sales would be directly related, cut down on biowaste. Tofu and cheese production are other suitable candidates. Remember when butchers used to cure their own meats and bake their own pies? This is all feasible, if - and here's the rub - politicians stop killing small shops with excessive taxes while helping supermarkets to develop predatory pricing (masquerading as the benefits of scale).
Get diversity on the high street, make parking free or cheap and easy and then towns can get back to being what they were designed for and that's not vaping outlets, nail salons, charity shops, estate agents, bookmakers and doorways stinking of piss.
BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2x0x6ypgneo
Addedum. A couple of days after this, the BBC carried another article. Apparently mine is not a new idea. It's being used not to grow crops to to reduce property taxes!
