Jameson Berkow: COVID-19 made cannabis ‘essential,’ but governments aren’t treating the industry that way

Cannabis has long been considered essential by its consumers, but the COVID-19 crisis made that status official.

In both Canada and the United States, cannabis businesses are blocked from accessing multi billion-dollar — or, in the U.S. case, multi trillion-dollar — bailout packages that are being made available to virtually every other sector of the economy. America at least can cite its ongoing federal cannabis prohibition as an excuse — illegal businesses cannot access legal funding, after all — but Canada can no longer hide behind the law.

It is not just toilet paper folks are stockpiling these days. Canadian legal pot sales spiked 21 per cent on Friday, March 13, compared to the previous Friday, according to data published on March 24 by Colorado-based market research firm BDS Analytics, and have been trending higher ever since. Top U.S. markets, BDS said, have also seen “unprecedented COVID-19 sales.”

“How do you hire employees right now? How do you train people if you can’t bring them together? Really, the worst part is that we were kind of right on the doorstep. We have our license, we have an operator license, stores that are in the process of being approved by the regulator. We were literally on the doorstep, but the reality is we cannot go any further,” he said.

Maybe now is a good time to work on that sobriety plan.......

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