Medical cannabis delivery services are essential for patients. They ensure that medical cannabis patients who are too ill to travel to dispensaries can receive their medicine in the privacy of their homes. Those with mobility issues or patients who have no way to travel to a dispensary also benefit from home delivery.
Medical cannabis patients are subject to pervasive discrimination. Exposure as a medical cannabis patient can result in the loss of employment or housing. For such patients, the privacy that delivery offers is vital.
Delivery services are widely misunderstood. Those following best practices operate out of a brick and mortar business location and observe the same health and safety rules as a dispensary which serves walk-in clients. They pay taxes, employ myriad safety protocols to protect patients and drivers, and test all of their products for purity and potency.
Delivery services are environmentally friendly, as they reduce the traffic congestion and the parking problems that result when patients congregate at walk-in dispensaries.
In San Francisco, which welcomes medical marijuana delivery services, it’s estimated that 46% of all medical cannabis sales are deliveries. This would seem to indicate that jurisdictions which choose to license delivery services may, in fact, collect as much tax from delivery services as they would dispensaries. In areas which have no walk-in dispensaries, delivery services would provide a stable and reliable tax base for municipalities.
Delivery services are the only alternative for patients who are too sick or frail to travel. In localities which have no walk-in dispensaries, they ensure that the most vulnerable of patients, the terminally ill, have access to their medicine. In doing so, they provide a vital service which in no way affects the general population.
Sarah Armstrong, JD, is director of Industry Affairs at Americans for Safe Access.
