The cannabis business, while populated largely by serious, well-intentioned people, has more than its share of crazies and mercenaries. Go take a look at just about any Internet forum devoted to cannabis, and you will find people trading in all kinds of conspiracy theories and making all kinds of wild claims both for and against cannabis.

Predictably, given the current state of civilization, some cannabis advocates and peddlers of elixirs now declare that their products can alleviate the symptoms of COVID-19—or even cure it.

No one is as critical of the quacks than the marketers of legitimate products sold for legitimate uses and advocates of sensible, safe marijuana public policy. The Washington Post earlier this month published an op-ed written by Baltimore history teacher David A. Guba Jr. headlined: “No, cannabis is not a miracle cure for COVID-19.”

It’s disheartening that such a message needs to be delivered to a mass audience, but the fact is that there is so much chicanery in the cannabis business that it’s now joining with “essential oils” and other quack cures as major presence in multi-level marketing schemes and in online marketing schemes like email spam and Facebook ads. That’s bad not only because people are getting ripped off and misled, possibly in dangerous ways, but also because CBD and some essential oils are also legit products with valid uses.

Peter Jonathan Hanna has more than 8,000 followers on Twitter. In his pinned tweet, he declares that “Cannabis cures all diseases” and that it is “the most powerful medicine in history.” Perhaps he’s never heard of penicillin — or perhaps he thinks it was a fake cure invented by the wicked masterminds of the pharmaceutical industry.

On March 31, Hanna, who is selling a book full of his thoughts about cannabis, proudly pointed to a High Times article that mentioned the “Coronavirus cannabis prepper kit” he was promoting on YouTube. The kit includes weed, food and a semi-automatic rifle.

The same day, Hanna tweeted: “My family and I have the coronavirus.” In a subsequent tweet on March 16, he said he was “99 percent sure” they had the virus, and he posted a video on YouTube where he asked viewers to weigh in on the question. He hasn’t mentioned it since, at least on Twitter, and he didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

If somebody with 8,000 followers can be said to be fringe, the same can’t be said of former NFL player Kyle Turley, who has more than 48,000. Turley played offensive tackle for the New Orleans Saints, the Kansas City Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams until 2007. He began using medical cannabis to address lingering pain from game injuries and to combat “bouts of depression and rage,” as the Los Angeles Times put it.

In mid-March, just as it became clear the pandemic would be severe, Turley started promoting a CBD product online. “@NeuroXPF CANNABINOIDS CAN HELP BOOST YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM AND WIN THE WAR AGAINST #COVID19 ask @ drsanjaygupta,” he tweeted on March 19, pasting in an ad promising that the CBD oil would “Boost Your Immune System” and “Crush Corona.”

Turley is or was an owner of NeuroXPF, the company that makes the oil. He also is or was an owner of a cannabis dispensary in Moreno Valley, in Riverside County. After getting a warning letter from the Federal Trade Commission, which has taken a hard line on companies selling supposed COVID remedies, he claimed he had relinquished his stakes in those businesses, which has not been independently confirmed. He said selling off his ownership has freed him to speak as a “private citizen.”

And speak, or rather yell, he has. “CANNABIS WILL PREVENT & CURE COVID19!!!!!!!…..commence the hate,” he tweeted on March 29. There is some research indicating that CBD and other cannabinoids can have calming effects, but much remains unknown about how that might work, whether it works similarly for everyone and whether it’s effective for every kind of emotional or behavioral malady.

Meanwhile, while it’s possible that some cannabis components might be antiviral agents, there is nothing like proof of it, much less any evidence that anything in the plant might be effective against COVID-19, a virus that is only months old. Nonetheless, the people making these claims point to this preliminary research as “proof” that cannabis will cure the virus.

Turley was still going strong this week. After having name-dropped Dr. Sanjay Gupta, one of the few TV-famous doctors who offer sound medical advice, Turley started yelling at him in all- caps, too, for not pushing cannabis as a treatment or cure for COVID-19. Gupta has in recent years become a careful advocate of medical cannabis, promoting it as a palliative for things like pain and seizure disorders only when there’s evidence for the claims.

There are many, many more examples of people with large followings promoting pot as a cure for the virus. Filmmaker and outspoken Hindu nationalist Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri tweeted that “Cannabis is a magic plant.” The tweet was accompanied by a picture of what looked like a still from a news show reporting that “Weed Kills Corona Virus.” When it was pointed out to that the picture was a fake created on a meme site, he refused to back down. Agnihotri has 313,000 Twitter followers.

“There is absolutely no proof or substantiated science indicating that somehow either cannabis or hemp cure or mitigate COVID-19,” pot lawyer Hilary Bricken wrote on her firm’s blog. Businesses and consumers “need to be on the lookout for snake-oil cures and/ or curative claims being shamelessly pedaled across the cannabis and hemp industries during this volatile time.”

Prohibitionists are making crazy claims as well. When the Drug Policy Alliance promoted an online festival, the proceeds of which would be directed to COVID-19 relief, Kevin Sabet, founder and president of the anti- cannabis group tweeted: “We’re trying to stop people dying, and you’re encouraging behavior that makes COVID-19 worse.”

Asked by multiple people how an online festival could make the virus worse, Sabet asked whether the event was “going to have anyone online using drugs” and whether it would “have messages promoting drug use.”

The people making this claim have more of a leg to stand on than do the cure-promoting quacks, but just a bit. Many doctors warn that smoking or vaping could make COVID symptoms worse and make it harder for the lungs to fight off the disease, although new research from France shows that a strikingly low number of smokers have gotten sick from the virus.

In any case, the legit cannabis industry as a whole, including the Drug Policy Alliance, has repeatedly warned about the potential risks from smoking, and also warned pot users not to share smoking or vaping devices. Most have suggested using edibles until the pandemic has passed. 

Read the flip-through edition of the Cannabis Chronicle magazine. 

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom last month gave the emerald light allowing cannabis dispensaries to remain open and sell marijuana during the shelter-in-place order, Assemblyman Ash Kalra saw  no reason why Santa Clara County wouldn’t follow the state’s lead.

Instead, local health officials restricted recreational cannabis to delivery-only and in-house sales to medical marijuana users in an effort to promote social distancing and curb the coronavirus outbreak.

“That’s when it raised my eyebrows,” Kalra says.

While Santa Clara County’s more restrictive stay-at-home mandate doesn’t necessarily make a distinction between recreational and medical, the county’s decision makers say the general rule is that healthcare operations get to stay open, dispensaries doling out medical marijuana being one of them.

The ruling, which came in a set of frequently asked questions that popped up on the county health department’s website on March 22, sent shock waves through the South Bay cannabis industry. Dispensaries and advocates argued that the local rule harkens back to a less enlightened era and runs contrary to the will of California’s voters, who overwhelmingly favored legalized recreational marijuana in 2016. 

“The differentiation of medicinal and adult-use cannabis doesn’t really exist anymore,” says Chris Lane, chief marketing officer of San Jose-based Airfield Supply. “Anyone over 21 has

the legal right to access cannabis. … There’s no other essential business that’s experiencing additional rules and regulations.”

Oakland-based cannabis attorney James Anthony called the FAQs problematic because, “they create an artificial distinction between medical and non-medical based on some unknown authority that does not exist in state law.”

Anthony has since launched a petition, which has garnered more than 21,000 signatures, urging Santa Clara County to reverse its decision and “not roll back Proposition 64.”

Proposition 64’s passage eliminated the need for medical marijuana cards. 

But while the number of people with prescriptions dwindled, those needing cannabis for health-related reasons didn’t. Restricting who’s allowed through the doors, Kalra says will strain the still- developing cannabis delivery market.

“The cannabis industry is still in its infancy and facing a number of logistical and fiduciary challenges,” Kalra and state Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose) wrote in a letter to Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody. “Requiring the industry to build delivery capacity under current circumstances is impractical and runs the risk of driving demand to the underground illicit market.” 

Dispensaries have already started to see an uptick in delivery sales. Caliva CEO Dennis O’Malley previously said that deliveries usually bring in one-third of the company’s sales.

“But over the course of the past month, we’ve seen this revenue model shift with delivery offerings now securing about two-thirds of our total income,” O’Malley said in late March.

Although delivery sales may be booming, Lane says he has concerns about their ability to make all of the orders.

“Even if we combined all the efforts of every dispensary in the Bay Area, there’s not enough supply or capacity to meet the demand,” he says.

Wendy Sollazzi, who heads San Jose Police Department’s Division of Cannabis Regulation, says they’re running the risk of marijuana users going back to the black market.

“The advantages of keeping licenses ‘recreational’ retail cannabis providers open to the public, while following social distancing requirements, is that people in San Jose are electronically age- verified and they are obtaining lab-tested product,” Sollazzi says. “Closing retail stores will redirect their purchases to the illegal market selling untested products and not age-verifying.”

On April 6, Kalra and Beall, along with San Jose City Council members Pam Foley, Magdalena Carrasco and Maya Esparza, lobbied the county health department to reverse its decision and allow curbside pickup.

Foley says she was especially concerned about seniors who rely on CBD oil for pain management. “A lot of seniors, they don’t have smartphones, and if they do, they don’t want someone to deliver CBD ointment for a drive by,” she says. “[It] makes it very difficult for a population that’s already at high risk.”

But County Executive Jeff Smith and County Counsel James Williams say that people don’t need medical marijauna cards for in-person purchases at dispensaries.

“The health order doesn’t say anything about medical cards or prescriptions or anything like that,” Smith says. “That’s not required pursuant to the order at all. It’s really an individual is on [the] honor [system]. If they need it for medical purposes, they can go to a dispensary.” 

Read the flip-through edition of the Cannabis Chronicle magazine.  

Despite what people on all sides of the question might say, declaring cannabis to be an “essential” service, thus keeping dispensaries open along with grocers and pharmacies, isn’t necessarily an easy call. Most consumers of legal cannabis are recreational users, after all. Most of them don’t need cannabis, as much as they might appreciate having it while they’re stuck at home. If it’s crucial that we eliminate human contact to the greatest degree possible, why should cannabis be excepted?

It’s a dilemma that local governments have wrestled with since the middle of March, when six Bay Area counties, followed later by the state government, issued stay-at-home orders and forbade all but “essential” businesses to close down. Although “essential” included cannabis, the details of how pot businesses should be allowed to operate were let to local jurisdictions. San Francisco at first declared that cannabis shouldn’t get the designation at all, but quickly backed off. A couple of weeks ago, Berkeley issued an order that cannabis shops had to close, even for curbside pickup. Only deliveries would be allowed. That order was rescinded in less than a day. 

On April 1, Santa Clara County ordered that cannabis sales would have to be delivery-only, except for medical marijuana purchases. Local dispensaries, customers and some of their shops’ suppliers mounted a pressure campaign to get Santa Clara to back off, just as San Francisco and Berkeley had done. A petition drive collected more than 18,000 signatures as of April 8, according to campaign leaders

The groundswell of support for the petition is not surprising. The bottom line for cannabis businesses and their customers is that, since cannabis has been deemed “essential” by the state, there’s no good argument for treating it any differently than any other business. One big reason: while recreational sales make up the bulk of the business, lots of people really do need cannabis for medical reasons. And, especially since cannabis became legal in California, there’s a murky middle ground, where many “recreational” users depend on cannabis partly to address health concerns, but don’t have a medical marijuana card. It’s a restriction that isn’t applied to, say, people who want to buy aspirin at CVS, or a bag of donuts at Safeway for that matter.

“With the passing of Prop 64, a medical card was essentially deemed unnecessary,” wrote Jocelyn Sheltraw, an executive at the cannabis-data outfit Headset, in an open letter to government officials posted on LinkedIn. “In fact,” she continued, “according to officials in Santa Clara County, 95 percent of people do not hold medical cards.”

If medical marijuana had been kept a separate business from recreational pot, it might be easier to shut down the recreational part, critics of these restrictions note. As it stands, it’s impossible. What’s more, many consumers who use cannabis to treat aliments are elderly or poor. “Both of these populations may have limited access to the Internet, which would prevent online ordering,” Sheltraw wrote. “And equally as important, these patients may need consultation with dispensary staff to receive proper medical guidance.”

Oakland-based cannabis attorney James Anthony warned that if the county’s rule remains in place, “It would set a really bad precedent, and other governments around the state could follow suit.” 

Read the flip-through edition of the Cannabis Chronicle magazine.  

Demand and average sales figures at Santa Cruz County cannabis dispensaries may be (way) up since the state enacted its sweeping shelter-in-place mandate, but no business, not even those in the red-hot cannasphere, are immune to the effects of the coronavirus.

Even though marijuana is widely considered a “non-cyclical,” capable of weathering (and sometimes flourishing in) tough times and economic downturns, the nasty little virus has put considerable pressure on the cannabis industry.

Officials in Santa Cruz County, like many other municipalities across California, have deemed cannabis dispensaries to be “essential,” allowing them to remain open alongside supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and banks. However, unlike almost all other essential businesses during these trying times, operators in the cannabis space are barred from receiving any and all federal assistance because the crop is still illegal at the federal level. That means dispensaries will not see a dime from the gargantuan $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) act.

“They are dependent on customer transactions to survive. If customers stop coming to them, that’s a big problem,” says Santa Cruz County Administrative Officer Melodye Serino.

According to the federal government, cannabis is a Schedule 1 controlled substance, so dispensaries, growers, cultivators, those doing lab testing and distributors won’t receive a crumb of the economic recovery package. If capital gets tight—and it has for many operators—there’s often no one to turn to. Banks can be prosecuted for conducting any business with cannabis companies, so loans (aside from the high-interest private sector) and cash for daily operations can be hard to come by. And due to the federal illegality of cannabis, dispensaries are precluded from taking federal tax deductions for their operating expenses.

“For cannabis businesses to be deemed essential but not eligible for any federal relief, it’s a bold contradiction between state and federal policy. It’s huge,” says Colin Disheroon, CEO of Santa Cruz Naturals. “We’re essential businesses that don’t get any tax relief, must conduct transactions without credit cards, and aren’t given any employment relief. Plus, we’re taxed heavily at all levels of the industry. All of these things may not impact us right now, but 2-3 months down the road… the cannabis industry finds itself in a potentially dire situation.”

Today, business for most players in the local cannabis industry is strong, but some wonder and worry whether the industry can sustain itself in the face of an uncertain future and global pandemic.

“I think all of this will be good for us, but not for a lot of people. Especially those without a delivery license. Which is pretty much everybody,” Cole Hembree, owner of Curbstone Exchange Dispensary, tells Cannabis Chronicle. He fears that the other 15-plus brick and mortar dispensaries across Santa Cruz County may have to close their doors—at least temporarily—in the wake of the rapidly changing global pandemic.

In other parts of the country, things in the cannabis space are markedly changing—and not for the better. Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak recently declared that all recreational and medical dispensaries must close their storefronts immediately. The Nevada Department of Taxation effectively outlawed curbside pickups of herb overnight. Don’t start crying for all of those Nevada potheads though. Cannabis will still be available, but only by delivery. With 38 dispensaries delivering cannabis across the state, Nevada consumers will get their weed—they might just have to chill a bit.

Santa Clara County’s top officials recently decreed that dispensaries would no longer be allowed to sell recreational weed to customers at their brick-and- mortar locations. South Bay weed purveyors are allowed to sell medicinal marijuana in their interior spaces (and by curbside), but recreational users must now use a delivery service to receive their medicine. Some dispensary owners, especially those who don’t (or can’t) offer delivery service, are irate.

By barring recreational or “adult-use” customers, they contend, the county is virtually eliminating the majority of their day-to-day business. To put things in perspective, only 3 to 5 percent of South Bay cannabis consumers do so with a doctor’s rubber stamp.

While cannabis is deemed “essential” in most counties, licensed dispensaries face an uncertain, and somewhat terrifying, future. “Right now we’re open for the public, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be open tomorrow,” says a manager at Capitola’s Herbal Cruz Dispensary.

“I think things are going to get worse— not better. People need to listen. And no one listens. I think they are really going to shut everything down. That is what is going to happen in Santa Cruz,” the manager says.

AT RISK COMMUNITY

What will happen if local dispensaries are forced to shut down in the wake of a citywide—or nationwide—quarantine? Where, and how will residents get their medical and recreational cannabis? The black market in Santa Cruz County will no doubt rise, flooding the area with untested, unregulated, possibly toxic, breathed-on and handled products. And dispensaries who deliver, like Hembree’s Curbstone, will probably need to buy more cars. But in all seriousness, many people could suffer.

“We have a large clientele who are medical patients. A lot of veterans, and members of the general public, coming into our shop and needing their medicine. To an extent we act as a pharmacy. The effects of us having to close our dispensary would show up almost immediately. It wouldn’t be good,” says Bruce Valentine, a budtender at the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance (SCVA).

Through its Veterans Compassion Program, SCVA serves around 150 veterans each month by handing out vouchers redeemable at its own dispensary. Local veterans each receive 8 grams of SCVA’s own flower at no cost. Without a physical dispensary, this program may be interrupted.

Access to and hours are severely impacted in countries like Italy, but pharmacies remain open for business. But how will dispensaries, who often act as de facto pharmacies themselves, be treated and effected if similar quarantines and social distancing measures are implemented on a national level here in the United States? We’ll most likely have to wait and see.

Read the flip-through edition of the Cannabis Chronicle magazine.