Legalization versus pandemic, which hit the cannabis market harder?

After a landline call, 20 minutes later, a person rolls into the specified location in an inconspicuous car and exchanges money for a bag of sandwiches filled with cannabis. A consumer needs to be knowledgeable and connected to trust the cultivation in order to find good cultivars. Basically, this is the heavily suppressed business model that bans non-gray-market cannabis. Between pharmacy raids during legalization and mandates during a pandemic, it becomes clear which government measure hits the cannabis market harder.

Prohibits shadow lifting to expose a tracked and tracked digital ecosystem

While on the phone, Michael Blanche, CEO and co-founder of Surfside, was interested in a new shift into the digital universe as the pandemic straightened its restrictive head in 2020 and 2021. Bans and mandates mixed with society’s newly discovered agoraphobia forced the U.S. cannabis market to go online during the pandemic. For Michael, that era was an odd opportunity as Surfside is a data collection agency on a marketing platform. So cannabis has been pushed ever deeper into the hands of big tech in the last two critical years. In fact, Snoop Dogg’s corporation known as Casa Verde invested $ 4 million in the platform during this time of restriction.

Canada’s industry already understands the push towards a centralized system too well. Conveniently, the entire cannabis market north of the U.S. border experienced a shock wave less than two years before the pandemic. It is true that the opportunities created by legalization were ripe for the few in Canada. Conversely, however, illegal consumers and traders who settled under communal acceptance were hit harder than the society-changing pandemic.

During legalization, Canada saw an overwhelming shift towards a digital market due to mistakes by policy makers. It took a year for enough physical stores to obtain legal retail licenses to support the market, and yet numerous old stores were closed immediately.

Why legalization was unprecedented

Bryan Raiser, the owner of a cannabis retailer in Squamish, British Columbia, opened legally in 2020. Because of this, Raiser didn’t notice any change in access caused by the pandemic, especially when compared to a series of raids that his pharmacy and other legacy cannabis companies did in 2019.

I noticed a gigantic Access issue after we got mugged but that was noticed by most of the people.

Bryan Raiser, owner of 99 North.

Photo courtesy of @citytammie.

Compared to a deadly virus, the Community Safety Unit (CSU), which acted as the provincial enforcement agency and removed pharmacies from the tearful eyes of medical patients and their caregivers, did far more harm to small businesses. And remember, many of these old pharmacies paid sizeable sums of money up to $ 30,000 for community licenses.

This means that these raids in court can be viewed as a breach of the Crown’s trust. In comparison, however, the pandemic tore away certain civil liberties that were viewed as a daunting betrayal even by highly committed scientists and doctors.

Forced online with no access after legalization and freedom during lockdown

Raids in pharmacies triggered by legalization forced cannabis into a digital market in many provinces. Liquor boards ruled the industry, forcing small businesses to operate illegally in order to survive. Similarly, according to Blanche, the pandemic pushed the U.S. market’s digital transition by two years in six months.

Through the pandemic, we’ve seen that every single cannabis retailer needs to have an online presence overnight. So in terms of raw transaction volume and the orders placed by these platforms, it really was an exponential curve … and that completely changes the discussion for consumers.

Michael Blanche – Co-Founder of Surfside

By chance, Canada’s tough efforts to centralize the cannabis market came about less than two years before an unprecedented virus outbreak was considered a pandemic. Despite their vast differences, both events hyperdigitized a formally illegal consumer goods and healthcare market valued at $ 60 billion.

Illegal (old) brick and mortar stores have largely been closed and have become scarce in many parts of Canada since legalization. Gray market traders who have not legally hidden themselves on the Internet. During this time, however, legal cannabis stores slowly began to emerge, forcing a gap in sensible access.

Instead of a purely digital ecosystem provided by delivery drones, Blanche agreed that technology should only be built into stationary access. Budtenders should be given a tool to support their compassionate role in the patient or consumer experience, rather than receiving a robotic replacement. To back this up, a new report found that only 18% of consumers were interested in brands, compared to 35% who were interested in taste and smell – both trumped by the THC content and the quality of the high.

Overall, there have been major changes from a trader on the other end of a cryptic phone call to every transaction that is tracked and recorded by an algorithm. Surfside also hopes to integrate this technology with social media accounts and the rest of the online universe. But of course all of this is restricted by heavy censorship as scientists are banned from Instagram for sharing cannabis education.

Let us know what you think of the cannabis market going hyperdigital and riddled with tracking technology. And look at that interview with a pot dealer to learn about the impact legalization has on the market story.