Drugs Under Quaratine

How People Find Pot: A Global Perspective

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Dr. Stefano Tijerina, a lecturer in management and Chris Kobrack Research Fellow in Canandian Business History at the University’s of Maine’s Business School. He continues our exploration of drugs under quarantine, exploring how the marijuana market functions in the US and abroad during a global pandemic. 

The news is bleak, and the media’s propaganda war against, and in favor of, the current administration, coupled with the lockdown resulting from COVID-19, makes it difficult for all Americans to stay home and comply with their social duty.  But unlike in 1918, the last time a debilitating illness swept the globe, today’s America has the luxury of enjoying a wider array of leisure activities under lockdown.

In many states this includes the legal right to consume marijuana in all its forms.  Indica, sativa, and hybrid “flower” are now accessible to hundreds of thousands of American consumers, who are incorporating it into their lockdown routine.  This new social experience isn’t limited to Americans, either.  The laws in Canada and Uruguay allow citizens to partake in this newly-legal form of recreation, and the same practice takes place in other countries too, though it’s criminalized there. Global consumers seeking the joy of the herb have found their own ways of securing a share of the market in order to navigate the new realities of life under the pandemic. 

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Blaming Black Vice

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Editor’s Note: A week and a half ago, we noted that 40,000 Americans had died from COVID-19. Now that number is over 70,000. It’s a frightening time, but we’re trying to record history as it happens. Today contributing editor Dr. David A. Guba, Jr., of Bard Early College in Baltimore, discusses the long history of blaming alcohol and drug use–vice–on minority communities in times of crisis. 

During a White House coronavirus press conference on April 10th, the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams urged black and brown Americans to quit drugs and alcohol and embrace family values to best avoid contracting coronavirus. 

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Avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. And call your friends and family. Check in on your mother; she wants to hear from you right now. And speaking of mothers, we need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop. We need you to understand — especially in communities of color, we need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable.

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How Evergreen, Vancouver’s First Legal Cannabis Store, is Coping with Coronavirus

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dr. Jeremy Milloy, who teaches in the Canadian Studies Program at Mount Allison University. He discusses the impact coronavirus is having on Canada’s legal cannabis system. 

Vancouver is the epicentre of Canadian marijuana culture. It’s also the city where drug user activism is most visible, and where Canada’s first legal safe consumption site opened. Points checked in with Mike Babins, proprietor of Evergreen, Vancouver’s first legal cannabis store, to see how he, his staff, and his clients were handling this extraordinary situation. 

Tell me about your store. 

We’ve always been known as Vancouver’s “Mom N’ Pop Pot Shop”. We opened September 2015 as a medical dispensary. We were the only shop in the city that tested everything before it went on the shelf. When legalization came, we liquidated all our product and stayed open selling accessories as a way to keep paying our staff. We got our license on Christmas Eve 2018 and opened on January 4th, 2019, as Vancouver’s First Retail Cannabis Store.

When did you first start thinking that COVID-19 would impact what you do? 

We were watching the news daily, figuring out what we would do in all the possible scenarios. In the end we’ve been making it up as we go along, tweaking our system regularly. From the customer feedback and positive social media posts it seems like we’re doing a good job!

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Cannabis in the Time of Coronavirus

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Editor’s Note: Today we’re continuing our investigation of drugs under quarantine. Contributing editor Bob Beach reports on the impact of the coronavirus on cannabis’s biggest holiday, 4/20, and the marijuana marketplace as a whole. 

We are more than a week removed from what was to be the greatest 4/20 party ever. It came and went and hardly anyone noticed. Of course, that’s because most of us were either stuck at home, subject to various lock-down orders and social distancing recommendations or working (as newly designated “essential” workers), all during a global pandemic. 

This was perhaps a result of the combined efforts of the pot industry, pot advocacy groups, and famous pot rebels like Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg advocating widespread compliance with lockdown orders and offering alternative celebrations via the suddenly-ubiquitous Zoom (check out the list on Billboard.com, and RollingStone.com). With a few exceptions, 4/20 celebrants largely remained at home.

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