A second Crown corporation tasked with helping prop up the Canadian economy during the COVID-19 pandemic is giving cannabis companies the cold shoulder. 

As hospitals across Canada scramble to find new protective gear for healthcare workers who are on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak, some are getting fresh shipments from an unlikely source: licensed cannabis producers.

Several major cannabis producers such as Canopy Growth Corp. and Hexo Corp. have provided hospitals with personal protection equipment (PPE) such as face masks, gloves, and bodysuits, drawing from their own excess inventory.

Staff at cannabis producers often use the same facemasks and other PPE gear that hospital workers wear when entering plant growing rooms to help prevent plant contamination and the transfer of mould or mildew which could be devastating for a company's harvest plans. 

The GrowthOp reached out to an illicit cannabis worker to find out what safety measures are in place for employees to manage the risks of the coronavirus. Here’s what they had to say.

To mitigate the financial strain COVID-19 and social distancing has placed on Canadians, the government has announced greater eligibility for EI and other financial breaks in the weeks and months to come. But these measures don’t offer much to those employed in an illegal capacity, like the very active illicit cannabis market. As someone who is currently employed by an illicit Toronto cannabis organization, I am acutely aware of the dangers of continued exposure to this virus in the workplace. 

Inventory at Canadian cannabis stores are lower than ever due to increased sales, but officials maintain supply is stable.

Marijuana sales hit an unprecedented bump last week, as American consumers stocked up on cannabis goods like it was toilet paper or hand sanitizer. Data now shows Canadian cannabis stores experience a similar coronavirus-related spike in sales, in some provinces.

hree members of Parliament and 74 Canadian cannabis industry professionals are calling on the federal government to include the cannabis sector in Ottawa’s COVID-19 relief funds.

Last week, Tantalus Labs CEO Dan Sutton tweeted the cannabis industry was being excluded from the federal government’s $10 billion in loans to support the Canadian economy.

On Thursday, Vancouver Kingsway MP Don Davies sent a letter to Minister of Finance William Morneau calling the exclusion “economic stigmatization” while urging for federal support of the cannabis industry. The letter was co-signed by MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and MP Scott Reid. All three MPs co-chair the Parliamentary Cannabis Caucus. 

You can’t keep a good pot shop down.

The One Plant marijuana dispensary in Barrie, Ont. shut its doors temporarily on Friday after it was reported one of its employees had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

“This decision was taken by One Plant leadership as a precautionary measure due to the rapidly evolving novel coronavirus (COVID-19),” said manager Ryan Grenville, according to CTV News.

The COVID-19 pandemic is shuttering businesses across the country, but the Canadian cannabis sector continues to be left out of economic relief plans. 

Earlier this month, a senior account manager from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) notified Dan Sutton, the CEO of Vancouver’s Tantalus Labs, that “we do not do business with cannabis firms at the time.” The news came after the BDC and the Export Development Canada (EDC) had announced additional loans and liquidity were coming for Canadian businesses. 

Last Thursday, the co-chairs for the Parliamentary Cannabis Caucus wrote a letter to Finance Minister Bill Morneau asking the federal government to include the Canadian cannabis sector in Ottawa’s plans. 

It could be shaping up to be a bad year for the black market.

A briefing book prepared for Bill Blair, the federal public safety minister, shows that Ottawa is very much pursuing its options when it comes to the illicit market, according to Marijuana Business Daily.

A redacted version of the book, dated last November, was posted to the internet last week and details some of the ministry’s priorities.

Among first-time health and wellness users, edibles are the second most popular form of consumption — along with vapes — only after concentrates.

There are many ways to consume cannabis. Some like smoking dried flower they can roll in a joint or purchasing pre-rolled joints, while others prefer consuming edibles, whether sweet (donuts) or savory (meatloaf). Still, others prefer their cannabis through vapes, topicals, tinctures, or extracts. Are some forms of cannabis healthier than others?   

The global pandemic has made it pretty clear that weed is considered an essential item for some people, but could the industry that produces it play a bigger role in taking the fight to COVID-19?

One reader thinks so and is encouraging cannabis companies to consider modifying their equipment and facilities to help ease the strain that the coronavirus is placing on the world’s fragile health-care systems. “I hope such drastic measures will not be necessary,” the reader noted, but added the wide range of locations could soon prove invaluable.

“There’s a reasonable number of them across the country, in cities and towns (and) they are likely equipped with facility security, access monitoring and control,” the reader noted of cannabis facilities.