Cannabis Sensei

HIGHly Opinionated: Covid and Cannabis, One Year Later

Blog · By Arkady Kats · Updated · 5 min read

covid and cannabis

Remember at the beginning of March 2020, when everybody was saying, “when everything gets back to normal” before talking about the future? Good times. Anyways, here we are, a year later, in the future. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve learned a whole lot over the past year.

Here are a few examples:

1 – Our government has collectively screwed it all up because politics are WAY more important than human health, and the economy is more important than death. (We’re not going into this in detail, I promise, not that type of blog).

2 – Listening to experts makes complete sense until the experts stop making sense. (Sorry, that was the last one)

3 – It’s way more doable than you would think to wear sweatpants for an entire year, not touching jeans once.

4 – Working at jobs you don’t like is completely overrated; actually, life is way too short to do things you don’t like. YOLO!

5 – Prison in Scandanavian countries isn’t that bad. (It’s literally like your apartment).

6 – Anxiety, depression, and insomnia aren’t any better when everybody is collectively feeling the same way.

7 – I lived a pretty hobbit-Esque, introverted life before Covid, and even I’m getting tired of my little apartment. I take walks now, daily, which I had no concept of before.

8 – People suck.

9 – Don’t ever underestimate your cannabis consumption. Just when you think you hit the limit, a new limit is born. Just when you think you’ve spent WAY too much money on weed last month, boom! It’s now a new month. It feels like survival mode, and that’s exactly when habits sneak up on you.

You get the idea; I’ve learned many lessons over the past 12 months, that list can be a lot longer, but for the purpose of this article, we’ll stick to the last point. I wrote a piece in March of last year about the tricky relationship between cannabis and self-isolation, and after going through it again, and it seems that nothing has changed.

This relationship remains quite delicate; let’s be real, cannabis has helped us all through these tough times. However, with normalcy comes routine, and with routine comes, well, mini-tolerance breaks.

This whole thing has become a self-medicating marathon, and I don’t think I’d be smoking this much weed without this amount of anxiety and uncertainty.

Many people went from smoking recreationally to using lots of cannabis every day just to cope, the way others turned to day drinking. That’s not recreational anymore. I guess what I’m really saying is that we haven’t figured anything out, and a year is a long time.

Some people went from being couch potatoes to trying new hobbies: baking, exercising, and playing guitar. Others went the opposite direction, from productive to barely alive.

There is no right or wrong anymore; the information that we’re receiving from so-called “experts” makes absolutely no sense; it seems that society is trying to figure mental health out with no help.

It’s not really about Covid anymore; any rational person understands the risk, all the precautions taken, and how dangerous such a virus is. But at the same time, IT’S BEEN A YEAR, and at this point, we’re all just trying to stay somewhat sane. Cannabis helps me stay sane.

Too much of it, on the other hand, helps me stay numb; there’s a big difference between numb and sane.

LET’S BREAK DOWN SOME NUMBERS:

Everything under the HIGHly Opinionated “title” is my opinion; from time to time, I like to splash some numbers around because, usually, they don’t lie.

Cannabis store sales in Canada hit about $268 million CAD in October 2020, according to revised Statistics Canada figures. During the same month in 2018, sales were about $42 million, and in 2019 about $130 million.

Sure, there are more stores, but let’s not forget the Covid impact. The cannabis industry showed a lot of growth, while most other industries suffered. Basically, we’ve all been stacking up on flower since the beginning of this whole thing.

Statistics Canada shows that Ontario led all provinces in the first year after legalization, with $217 million in sales. By spring 2020, Canada-wide sales reached about $186 million in a single month, after climbing from April to May.

According to a recent Leafly report, In the US, during an economic recession and spiked unemployment numbers, the cannabis industry added 77,000 full-time jobs in 2020. Spiking sales usually means more work available, and sales are spiking!

The same report cites Massachusetts, where it says retailers sold about $700 million in cannabis products in 2020, compared to about $400 million in 2019.

(Graphic data courtesy of Headset and CannaCraft)

Another interesting stat from this Leafly report (coming from data analysts at Headset and Cannacraft) is that in California, established consumers increased their average purchase size by about 33%. My guess is that pandemic stress is a big part of that.

However, there is also the fact that money isn’t being spent as much in general. There are fewer options available for leisure spending; clubs, bars, concerts, movies…that money is going into buying more weed!

COPING WITH UNCERTAINTY

Normal has gone out the window; uncertainty, collective anxiety, and confusion all of those are part of our new normal now.

Find a way to cope with it, or it will eat you alive. Mental health took a hit for a lot of people during the pandemic, and many of us reached for cannabis to cope. That doesn’t make it harmless.

Plenty of people I know have increased their use by a whole lot this past year. The concern is that we may be developing routines that stick around after the pandemic, like this over-consumption. NIDA estimates that 22% to 30% of people who use cannabis have cannabis use disorder.

Now let’s be real, the whole day-drinking thing where parents were opening up bottles of wine before lunchtime just to cope with the kids running around all day may have been funny at first or somewhat relatable, but it’s also terrible for your health.

The fact that it took a 4-minute phone convo with a random doctor (because walk-in clinics are now closed for in-person appointments, they get a DR to call you) for them to prescribe me 30 pills of Zopiclone, a very strong sleeping pill, is also terrible (true story).

Compared to some other “vices”, leaning on cannabis during hard times may seem like the lesser evil, but it can still turn into a real problem.

You know what they say, though, everything in moderation, even weed. Tolerance breaks are very needed, it may be difficult right now, but it does feel good.

If you’re in the US and can’t cut back on your own, SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) is free, confidential and open 24/7.

Here’s to me not writing an article at the beginning of 2022 entitled: Covid and Cannabis, Two Years Later!

Editor’s note: This opinion piece was written in early 2021. Sales figures were updated to revised Statistics Canada data. Cannabis is for adults only (19+ in most of Canada, 21+ in Quebec and in US states where it’s legal).

Sources

More in Blog