The cannabis sector appeared in a dire position heading into the coronavirus outbreak. The sector was generally unprofitable and needed additional capital to grow so an extended shutdown of retail stores would have crushed the stocks.
“Right now the state of New Jersey is allowing 10 patients inside the facility. Everyone will be 6 feet apart. There are markers on the floor so people know where to stand. And our staff is well-prepared to handle the influx of patients,” said Verano Holdings Retail Executive Vice President Anthony Dindia.
Dindia says ZenLeaf’s operated by Verana Holdings with dispensaries in seven states. It’s taken two years for the company to get proper permits and finally open in Elizabeth.
In the legal market, licensed companies are currently sitting on a surplus of roughly one million pounds, enough to keep the state stoned at current levels for six years. Meanwhile, Oregon’s illicit growers just keep doing what they’ve always done, supplying unlicensed cannabis to appreciative consumers in states where a combination of restrictive laws and poor climate make for a net cannabis deficit.
A 2018 regional cannabis summit created a template that East Coast governors used in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only are marijuana businesses excluded from federal coronavirus relief funds, but medical cannabis dispensaries in New York are also ineligible for a new COVID-19 loan program that the state is offering.
Under the New York Forward Loan Fund (NYFLF), marijuana shops are specifically excluded, alongside payday loan providers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores and astrologers. Information pages about the program don’t provide a reason for why dispensaries are considered ineligible.
The vlogger on WeedTube seemed to capture the moment. The woman, who posts as @indicawife, told viewers last month that she’d spent some of her $1,200 stimulus check at the local cannabis dispensary.
“We’re all going to be smoking a fat blunt with Donald Trump’s money,” she said as she took a puff. “That’s a bet.”
There’s a lot to be depressed about as a lethal virus spreads, leaving economic devastation and political division in its wake. But these difficult days haven’t been awful for the up-and-down cannabis industry.
Q: The pandemic ushered in some new innovations for patients and dispensaries, including curbside pickup. How do you think these changes are being received by patients? Are they satisfied?
The Tri-State area is among the U.S. regions most ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. The United States has more than 1.6 million cases and nearly 100,000 deaths, according to reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But more than 500,000 cases and 45,000 deaths come from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania alone.
The pandemic has had a disastrous impact on these state economies and lawmakers have turned to an unlikely savior to increase tax revenue — marijuana.
By early 2020, marijuana had made tremendous strides toward legalization—for either medicinal or recreational purposes—in most states and even implicit federal recognition in the form of safe-harbor legislation for insurers and banks conducting business with the cannabis sector. But then COVID-19 struck, and progress predictably slowed. Nonetheless, unintended effects of the global pandemic may ultimately usher in a new wave of legalization and protection for marijuana businesses and the insurers and banks who work with them.
There’s a gaping budget hole caused by an economy in tatters.
There’s growing voter support and some assurance that the issue is no longer political poison. And there are tax windfalls, potentially huge revenues to be gleaned, if a bill can win bipartisan support in Harrisburg.
For those reasons, some Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are coming around — if slowly — to the idea of legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use.
The reasons are not hard to discern.
COVID-19 might not be the only new strain to hit New York.
State lawmakers are making a fresh push to legalize pot and expand sports betting, saying tax income from the vices can help fill a gaping budget hole widened by the coronavirus.
Democratic state Sens. Jessica Ramos, Brad Hoylman and Jamaal Bailey — representing Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx & Mount Vernon respectively — teamed up with the Legal Aid Society on Thursday to urge state lawmakers to legalize recreational marijuana.