Marijuana dispensaries are deemed ‘essential’ in LA, allowed to stay open during coronavirus order
(CNN) – With California residents being asked to stay at home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and all “non-essential businesses and areas” being closed down, officials in Los Angeles are making sure that marijuana is still available to the public.
Marijuana dispensaries are being deemed as “essential businesses,” as they are allowed to remain open under the state’s “Safer at Home” order.Los Angeles has “cannabis dispensaries with a medicinal cannabis license” listed under “essential infrastructure” or “healthcare operations” that are exempt from closing.
(Featured image is “420 Estados Unidos” by Salim Virji. Used under creative commons license.)
Kinda messed up how it’s kinda illegal.Report
So far as I know, no place has deemed liquor stores to be non-essential. Equal treatment for all intoxicants!Report
PA closed the state liquor stores (which is the only place you can buy much booze in PA). This led to a bunch of articles on how alcoholics will go through the DTs because of withdrawal.
The lists of what are and what are not essential services is a testament to the power of local interests and lobbying.Report
Heck, and Colorado loosened its rules so that restaurants open for pickup and delivery can include alcohol.Report
I heard you can do pick up cocktails in SF now. There are restaurants selling bottles of wine to go but I do not understand why anyone would want to pay the mark up except from extreme laziness.Report
Really? Laziness is the only reason?
I’m on Day 7 home alone with the boys; their mom is on quarantine. I’m unwilling to take them into stores to minimize their risk of exposing others as carriers.
You can bet your ass I’d pay the markup to make one stop and get food AND wine without entering a store if I didn’t have it at home.
And I don’t have it nearly as hard as others.
Get your head out of your ass and consider a perspective beyond your own.Report
(Lock-down, Day 7: liberals turn on each other.)Report
I’m ordering take out from one of the local bars later. Might be some alcohol too despite being well stocked. It’s one of the places I want to still be here 6 months from now and will pay a mark-up to support that, as long as I’m not on the chopping block anyway.Report
Texas apparently has, too. Don’t know about my state. I’m not a drinker so that doesn’t matter to me, but I get how that matters a lot to many people. My personal biggest “vice” is sugar, I have sufficient cookies and chocolate at this point in time.
I am also very happy I placed a large order with my favorite loose-tea provider about a month ago, I am also well stocked with thatReport
Maybe PA decided that their liquor stores are non-essential because they are government owned and don’t want to deal with liability issues if a state worker got infected.Report
As I understand it, in Illinois alcohol is considered a grocery item, so the liquor stores operate under the same rules as grocery stores. That is, one may enter the store to shop, as opposed to conducting the transaction on the street or parking lot outside.Report
It’s always a mindbender to me when I visit my mom in Illinois, coming from a state that was very, very recently totally “dry” except for liquor stores and low-point beer, to walk into the Walgreens near her and see an entire aisle of hard liquor. I cannot help but think that’s a big money maker for them.Report
Off thread, but so utterly astounding I have to share it.
As it stands right now, governors are bidding against each other for medical equipment and supplies for in-state use, in some cases being outbid by the federal government, which is driving prices up and leaving others with shortfalls. The governor of Illinois mentioned this state of affairs in the form of a complaint about the Fed Gov’s role. This is Trump’s response:
Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings. We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!
Trump explicitly says that his view of the federal government’s role is to back them up “should they fail,” rather than proactively helping them to succeed. But we know *already* that states in fact are failing to acquire – and will continue to fail to acquire – these supplies because not enough of them are being produced and Trump’s taken effectively zero action to remedy that problem. I know that Trump and conservatives like to say the quiet part loud, but this admission is thunderous. To me anyway.Report
Iron Law: Trump would rather the institution of American governance fail than lose his power within the institution.Report
Illinois Governor Pritzker responds:
You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans.
You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat.
Where were the tests when we needed them?
Where’s the PPE?
Get off Twitter & do your job.
Christamighty, this is going to end tragically for so many people….Report
He’s a hotelier, beneficiary of inherited wealth that like to talk like he was raised as a big-city construction worker and who has spent way too much of his time of late blaming his political opponents. And Trump’s obnoxiously bad too.Report
One is proactively using his constitutionally accorded power to resolve a serious health crisis, the other is actively making things worse.
Both sides are obnoxiously bad!Report
I agree with your Iron Law. What is also interesting is that the response to this pandemic seems to be driven by ideological priors and rigidity. Governor Abbot in Texas and Governor DeWine in Ohio are arguably the only two Republican governors from red or reddish states taking this seriously. Barker and Hogan govern blue states and need to act accordingly.
So you have liberals working really hard to socially distance no matter the cost or pain and then a lot of red staters still going “fake news.” Or libertarians who say that economic collapse is not worth the cost of saving lives and flattening the curve.Report
The argument against “economic collapse” is not limited to libertarians and is about all the costs that arise from shut down versus the costs of not shutting down.
Some folks will die directly due to shut down. Some will die indirectly. Some will be greatly harmed.
That doesn’t mean a shut down is wrong but it does need to be considered.Report
Markets can never fail and whatever happens when you invoke a market is the Best. Doubt at your peril.
Yes. His failures and corruption is now leading to deaths and likely a lot of them. You would think ordering production of giant piles of med gear would be the f*cking simplest easiest thing any prez could do and which would help. Yet somehow he fails at this.Report
We’re going to re-learn a lot of things that our parents had leisure to forget and we mocked our grandparents for thinking.Report
All depends on how long this goes on. If the worst is blunted in 6-8 weeks we will all brush ourselves off and pretend nothing happened. If we’re still doing this in July we’ll be re-learning those lessons good and hard. If we find ourselves in November without a vaccine and a resurgence working its way up from the southern hemisphere well… who knows what the order will be this time next year.Report
Hoping for the 6-8 weeks scenario… currently the best case scenario. If we get the best case scenario, I’d like to schedule a conversation about whether we should move manufacturing back to stateside for stuff like “medical supplies”. I’d also like to have a conversation about J-I-T logistics supply chains.
If we’re still doing this in July, we’ll probably want to talk about other things.
November? We’ll be talking about Federalism. For real, this time.Report
The bill on having no industrial policy and magic trickle down thinking is really coming due isn’t it? And it’s funny, none of the supply side, with all its built in advantages and hand outs is coming through for us. Maybe we’ll learn how to do collective action again, or maybe we’re too far gone.Report
“There is no such thing as society, only individuals.”
Maggie Thatcher
Hard to have herd immunity if you don’t believe in herds.Report
Oh I don’t think the ability to take collective action when warranted is in irreconcilable conflict with individualism. More just that we’ve allowed ourselves to be talked into the soft, comforting idea that we can always have our cake and eat it too. We’ve traded real investment in ourselves for cheap toys instead. Short term pleasure instead of deferred gratification. Etc. Etc. Etc.
And maybe its just me but any time a situation like this is posed as collectivism vs. individualism I get a creepy vision of the moral majority or the woke brigades or whoever storming my home over my various sins. To me this is less a matter of philosophy and more one of being exceedingly foolish with our money. We blew our inheritance on silly foreign toys when we should’ve been building a nest egg or saving for a rainy day.Report
I’m remembering my Nietzsche, for some reason.
Zarathustra, in particular.Report
When I hear the word Nietsche, I reach for my Otto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=2j3adcbEwSM&feature=emb_logoReport
Six to eight weeks is about as much social distancing and shelter in place that I think people can put up with. Somebody on another blog pointed out that modern people don’t have the wherewithal to deal with this the way our grandparents and great-grandparents dealt with the Great Depression and World War II. In some ways, I think what we are being asked to is a greater deprivation.
Great Depression era people had to deal with material deprivation but were still allowed to be social creatures. You could hang out with friends and family, date, and participate in your community. We are being asked to keep our distance and live alone as much as possible. Even with the Internet that is pretty big ask. Saying no meeting with friends and family and no romance and sex for eighteen months is just too much.Report
It’s definitely much more of a mental game. I can tell you being shut in with a toddler without usual outlets has been intense. And this has been with daycare open. It shuts down officially Wednesday after which I’m expecting all manner of acting out and none of the usual mini-sanctuaries.Report
In some ways, I think what we are being asked to is a greater deprivation.
Lock-down, day 7: Dearest Mollie, provisions remain stocked though toilet paper continues to be our greatest concern. Spirits are low. Never before, in the history of our great country, have people been asked to sacrifice as much as we are now. Tell mother that I love her. .Report
I know you are joking but humans are generally social creatures with some exceptions. Telling people not to engage in real world socialization with friends and family for eighteen months is really unprecedented. We are meant to be in human contact with each other. Plus, not everybody has a job that can be done from home or reserves of cash to get through the crisis. Things are going to get real bad emotionally and materially for a lot of people.Report
Yes, that. That exactly.
I flinch when I think of me going through this at various other points in my life.Report
I’m calling it right now: I’m gonna be That Auntie who sends my niece and any second cousins/great-niblings I acquire down through the years big packages of toilet paper and containers of dried fruit and similar, and they will just all smile at each other and go “The Corona is why she is This Way.”
Or, at least, I hope we are all around in the future for me to be That Auntie.Report
My dad always talks about how wild it was when my great grandmother died. She lived through the occupation of France. Apparently going through her room at my grandmother’s they found hidden supplies of non-perishables, survival gear, and several weapons.Report
“It’s a care package?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s in it? The usual?”
“Yeah. TP (the good stuff), dates, almonds, and another one-shot 3D printed gun.”Report
It makes sense to hold that marijuana distributors are an essential business. Many people need marijuana to ease chronic pain. You don’t want to overwhelm hospitals when they need to be dealing with Covid-19 patients. Marijuana is calming drugs and will help recreational users keep sanity as they stay cooped up in their doors.Report
I would tend to agree, except for the minor part where it’s *ILLEGAL*.Report
We are talking about where it is legal though.Report
Ish, at best.Report
You got politicians and cops there suddenly saying, “To hell with what the state constitution and law say. Let’s take advantage of the pandemic to close down the dispensaries?” Or DEA sniffing about, thinking that at a time when the federal courts are struggling under the load, it’s a good idea to arrest the owners and staff?Report
I haven’t heard anything about that down here (yet) but it is something that I’d be worried about, given the amazing amount of money that is rolling in.
Of course, it’d give a black eye to the DEA but who cares? It’s not like you can vote the DEA out.Report
It’s obvious that these critical medical supplies should be provided for free during this crisis, instead of letting the industry exploit their customers for profit.
*eyeballs the West Coast twitterverse*
As Captain Kirk would say “Load tubes one and two and fire for effect!”Report
Methinks tax revenue from dispensaries that’s what’s “essential” but YMMV.Report
Especially when numbers start trickling in next month and we see how badly state government revenues have cratered.Report
The governor of Ohio has shut down abortion clinics, you know, to fight the virus.
“On behalf of the Department, you and your facility are ordered to immediately stop performing non-essential and elective surgical abortions,” each letter states. “Non-essential surgical abortions are those that can be delayed without undue risk to the current or future health of a patient.”
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/ohio-attorney-general-orders-abortion-providers-to-halt-offering-procedure/Report
Texas too.Report
I noticed that a prominant “marital aid” store up in the capital has added a dispensary on the inside. Not sure which one gives shoppers cover for the other any more, but I have renamed it in my head as Bongs n’ Dongs.Report
Trump’s kids do not smoke or drink anything like regular deplorebles. As reports state. No prob.Report