The evening before St. Patrick’s Day was when the world transformed for California state. The Bay would go into a lockdown state soon after St. Patrick’s Day, and Los Angeles another day later, as per the state Governor Gavin Newsom’s ordinance. The governor recently issued a safer-at-home ordinance for the entire state.
It is arguable that cannabis has had the most successful epidemic after President Joe Biden himself. For your information, Biden followed medical professionals’ advice to drive home the message of him being moderate right down to DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue.
Several business establishments were made to shut down, but there has been access to medical marijuana even since the epidemic’s arrival. Delivery services, retailers and some other industry players scrambled to execute effective steps to safeguard customers and workers. Those measures worked out well for them. The Republican Party would have fancied directing attention to a dispensary-based event as a super-spreader, but nothing untoward has happened here. Industry people may have developed COVID-19, but the industry has usually done well to protect them.
Big Numbers
It is good the industry did that since a greater number of individuals smoked cannabis. We will shed light on that with the state tax numbers. California earned around $177 million during the quarter ahead of the global crisis that closed the previous fiscal year. The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration announced this February that the state earned around $236 million in 2020’s fourth quarter. Amazingly, local taxes are not even part of that figure.
Anyhow, there was a bigger number than that in 2020’s Q3 period. If you add slightly above $30 million to that figure, then it would have doubled 2019’s last quarter. The above information perhaps best quantifies how much medical cannabis moved in the state over the epidemic days. Why? Because almost every data set that we utilize to understand this industry relies on limited sample portions of distributors and dispensaries that take part in that process willingly. Many big-name businesses do not partake in the process of understanding the same.
The Weed
While much good cannabis was in circulation, it is possible to do better at any time in that regard. There was fierce competition for best quality supremacy, but we also saw several cheaper options in the market. Glass House Farms launched its Runtz cannabis strains worth $35, whereas Carlos Santana chose to trade quarters of reasonable cannabis from California’s Wine Country region and more points up north. Those were cool things, but the number of mylar-like packaging increased on Alibaba in the epidemic period.
If someone approaches you with bogus Devine Runtz products, you probably would cry. Anyhow, despite those tears, the fact that cannabis growers have been working on indoor gardens has benefited some other industry players. We are now seeing spectacular cannabis genetics. The so-called ‘gas’ cannabis varieties with different smelling notes, now compete against dessert weed products.
Equity, And Imprisoned People Come Home
One more cool thing from the epidemic was to see equity brands getting major success when they already opened their doors. The already-functioning cannabis brands gained from the increase in cultural awareness about criminal justice and race in the US before the epidemic. The pandemic-induced bottlenecks affected a greater number of equity brands in the US that were attempting to open for customers. The unluckiest cannabis-related element of the epidemic is perhaps that.
Anyhow, besides that issue, there is more conversation around equity now than before. There may not be enough equity, or maybe attempts to exclude it from the conversation, but there are louder demands to include equity than before. LA Weekly first reported that, which is not just a case of the outlet supporting charity cases about social justice. The fact is that there are awesome goods at many of the said brands. As for LA Weekly, it is a good thing to support communities that the so-called war on drugs affected most badly.
Last but not least, the epidemic saw a greater number of federal cannabis convicts coming home from prison. That occurred through clemency, or the coronavirus-related events that involved some at-risk convicts.