Cannabis is Now Considered an Essential Business
With restaurants shut down, backed up lines at supermarkets, and cabin-fever becoming part of everyday life during COVID-19, a silver lining arises paving the path for a rainbow to a pot of gold for Cannabis.
Delivery services in California that have spent years perfecting a convenient, consumer-focused experience with fast delivery and packaged goods are thriving. The manufacturers, cultivators, and distributors continue to ensure quality products are arriving at dispensaries which bring relief to not just Americans, but Earthlings across the globe for both medical and recreational purposes.
It is not just flower, edibles, or one segment – but the entire cannabis industry as a whole has been deemed essential. This means that where other businesses have shut down, as a result, the cannabis industry in times of any crisis will remain open.
Cannabis is Recession-Proof
However, the fact that cannabis is considered an essential good during this time will likely have significantly stronger impacts that most people may not have thought about it.
First, it means that companies that make it through this time will come out stronger, more streamlined, and have a newly expanded market for cannabis consumers. We’ve talked to a few people who said: “Well since I can’t go out drinking or partying at a club, why not try cannabis and relax?” Many of them have switched over purely because it helps them cope with the anxiety, stress, and dealing with COVID-19 and when normal life kicks in, they might still use it occasionally as a stress relief. This means cannabis is becoming more accepted in the United States as a whole.
Secondly, the cannabis industry is well – “Made in the USA.” Cannabis arriving from out of the country – like from China, South America, or even Europe is illegal. Taking California example, our industry is thriving with purely California grown, manufactured, distributed, and sold products. Edibles, vape pens, topicals, and all sorts of cannabis products are getting a much-needed boost to their sales which is in turn – creating more revenue for packaging, ingredient, and marketing companies, etc.
Cannabis Being Essential Means the Businesses Supporting Cannabis Also Need to be Essential
The same can be said for other states with legalized cannabis when we are talking about creating American jobs, tax dollars, and goods – cannabis is the prime example of something we do VERY well.
This leads to a prediction I want to throw out there. The impact for federal legalization that being deemed an essential good has. As a lawyer, the fact that cannabis is categorized as an essential good is incredibly important – it creates something we call a precedent.
It means that we have something to reference that in a crisis, cannabis was considered essential helping the United States cope with the COVID-19 socio-economic impacts including creating jobs, bringing relief to citizens, and generating income for the state and federal governments. This leads to an incredibly strong argument for cannabis legalization on a federal level and may very well be the catalyst that drives it through.
Cannabis being essential and the prospects of future federal legalization open doors for people who look at the industry as it will be, not just how it is now. In essential terms, this means that joining the cannabis industry now before it becomes federally legalized is the only shot that most entrepreneurs, small and medium businesses will ever have. There is no coca-cola, no Marlborough, no Nestle of cannabis yet.
However, once federal legalization does occur, this means major corporations can really start pumping billions of dollars into the industry and monopolizing the industry. The legalization of cannabis is just over the horizon and there has never been a better time to join before the REAL green rush arrives.
