Cannabis Startups Have To Cope With Coronavirus (COVID-19). Preserve Supply Chain.

Leveraging Technology and Best Practices To Make It Through A Health Crisis

By: WeedClub CEO, Evan Horowitz, Sunday, March 1, 2020 at 12:35 PM PT

Prohibition might not have been the biggest threat to the successfulness of the cannabis supply chain it turns out.  In the face of a public health crisis, how will we manage risk to protect our families, workers, teams, patients, customers, and researchers in the cannabis industry?  

It was not a coincidence when Xoom stock went bonkers as the virus got worse and more health bulletins were posted.  Common sense would tell you that less human interaction during a virus breakout would cause a shift in how we do business.

In China, food deliveries became contactless.  The name and body temperature of both the person who prepared the food and the delivery person became essential additions to the packaging.  People have to eat and still need things during a pandemic, so food delivery is an ideal endeavor to migrate almost enitrely to delivery apps until it is safe to revert back to normal.  We can do the same with weed.

Startup expert Elad Gil, who has an exit to Twitter under his belt, posted a useful PSA on his blog recently.  There is a lot of helpful advice in the post for preventing the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19), such as best practices for fist bumps, handling gas pumps and door handles.  

The part of the blog post that is a warning shot is the part about viruses like Coronavirus, such as Spanish Flu & H1N1 Flu in the UK, having a second wave of outbreak.  

The good news is that after the second wave, the public's immunity is able to overcome the outbreaks via "herd immunity". 

We have heard a lot about how only people with an underlying or secondary health condition die from Coronavirus, however that number of people is a huge number of people.  The cannabis industry is still handling a Schedule I drug that is illegal at the federal level.  During a pandemic, we have to make sure that medical cannabis patients continue to have safe and easy access to marijuana.  

Without banks and credit cards, how can we get to a contactless transaction if need be?  This problem is a waterfall effect from Prohibition on down the supply the chain.

I Co-Founded WeedClub® in part to solve this problem.  

Now, I'm speaking up because the industry is no longer a "Vice" industry that is the same as tobacco or gambling.  Weed is a wellness industry.  Collectively ensuring that the wellbeing of our customers, industry teams and families is entact is a building block for successfully changing the paradigms about weed forever.  

People's health depends on it.  

Some care about the way an outbreak could ruin economic matters.  Economically, the industry is currently viewed as a government cash printing machine.  Outrageously high regulatory and tax issues cause prices at the dispensary register to be way too high.  Yet, patients barely complain.  To have access to medical marijuana is life changing.  

For all the great tips that Elad Gil shared click here.  

Here are the Startup-related Tips he shared:

• Encourage hand-washing. You can watch a video here for best practices. You may want to add a few purell dispensers around the office as a reminder.
• Wipe down work areas regularly. There is some evidence suggesting the virus may stick around for at least a few hours, if not more, on surfaces. You may also want to wipe your phone down on a regular basis.
• Encourage flu vaccination. This will decrease health burden on hospitals and also prevent people from getting the flu and thinking they have COVID-19.
• Zero tolerance sick policy. Anyone who is sick, or starting to feel sick, should take a sick day or work from home.
• Curtail travel and conferences and move to video calls. Your employees may generally want to decrease travel and in particular avoid countries where either COVID-19 has started to spread (China, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand) or if you want to be extra cautious, where it is highly likely to spread (Indonesia, much of the middle east due to Iran spread, most African countries with strong China ties).
  • If an employee is returning from one of these countries, they may want to consider self-quarantine for 14 days.
  • As a rule of thumb you can use the US CDC site to assess what countries should be on your no fly list. The CDC right now (Feb 28, 2020) lists China, Korea, Italy and Iran as the countries that are “level 3”.
  • The reason to avoid this travel is (a) so your employees can avoid getting sick and (b) so your employees can avoid the potential for quarantine upon return and (c) your employees can avoid getting stuck in a country if a region is shut down.
  • Some countries, such as Israel, have asked its citizens to curtail all international travel entirely. Similarly, Nestle, which employees over 200,000 people has stopped all international travel.
• Curtail visitors from other countries. A number of companies are starting to adopt a “no visitor” policy for people traveling from the countries listed above and they suggest moving such meetings to a video call.
• Plan for the remote work contingency. It is worth planning how your company will work if the virus takes off in your country, or in countries where your employees work. Do you adopt a work from home policy or other approaches? What is the threshold for work-from-home? Coinbase has a guide like this.

• Make sure your family has 2-3 months of medicine. If a loved one is taking a medicine or drug regularly, you may want to ensure a few months extra supply. Approximately 60% of common pharmaceuticals are partially manufactured or packaged in China. FDA has just announced the first shortage due to supply chain issues in one drug.
• Plan for the unlikely event you can not leave the home for 2 weeks due to isolation or quarantine.This may impact food or other planning. Alternatively, countries may meter the number of people who can enter a supermarket at a given time.
• Plan for caring for a sick loved one. If hospitals are temporarily overwhelmed, family members who get infected, or who have pre-existing medical conditions, may experience delay in care. Plan ahead for your specific situation.

Thank you to the cannabis industry pioneers who are the reason the industry exists today.  They preserved genetics, supplied patients, had nowhere to enforce contract diputes, had their federal civil rights violated like we wrote about yesterday, and they never got any love for it.  The weed industry has to welcome more diversity and become more inclusive.  This is another reason I Co-Founded WeedClub.