The best pot shops in every state where weed is legal

Skye Gould/Business Insider

Americans spent over $5 billion on legal medical and recreational marijuana in 2015. That's more than what they dropped on Doritos, Cheetos, and Funyuns combined.

These transactions didn't go down in seedy back alleys. These days, patients and weed enthusiasts pay visit to brick-and-mortar shops across America, where smoke-able marijuana, infused foods, concentrates, and pot paraphernalia are sold legally.

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia currently have laws legalizing marijuana in some form (for medical or recreational purposes), and voters in another five states will cast ballots for legalization this November.

With dispensaries likely to start cropping up on more street corners this fall, we set out to identify the existing shops setting the bar in marijuana retail. We teamed up with Leafly, the world's premiere cannabis information resource, to find the best dispensaries across the US.

Leafly, often called the "Yelp of weed" for its dispensary and strain reviews, publishes a monthly Leafly List of the buzziest dispensaries in North America (for the purposes of our list, we stuck to US-only). Leafly's algorithm uses an array of weighted metrics designed to highlight top performers in categories like service, atmosphere, product quality, and customer engagement.

For this particular list, Leafly drew on data from the past six months and tweaked the algorithm slightly to ensure a level playing field for dispensaries from every region.

Here are the 25 pot shops blazing a trail in the industry.