🌿 Getting medical marijuana for free

Happy Weed Wednesday. Thanks for subscribing to the newsletter that makes you smarter about weed in 4 minutes and 20 seconds or less. Here's what we got for you this week:

  • Free marijuana: How medical marijuana patients can get free weed

  • Business highlights: Over 8,000 weed jobs created in Sacramento, cannabis tourism industry valued at $17 billion, layoffs at Eaze and Dutchie

  • 'Cannathletes': Runners high is a real thing and it's a growing industry

  • Pot Politics: NYC Mayor urges citizens to 'light up', new fine for gifting weed in Connecticut, community organizations benefiting from legal cannabis tax revenue

Getting free weed as a medical marijuana patient

East of Eden Cannabis Company | Veterans' Supply Kit

Getting weed for free sounds too good to be true, right? That's what we thought until reading an LA Times article about Charlene Modeste, who received over $1,000 worth of cannabis products for free.

Charlene's story

As someone with a chronic health condition known as uterine fibroids, Charlene consumes about a gram of cannabis oil a day to help her deal with it. Fortunately for Charlene, this helps with the health condition but it would not help with her financial situation if she had to pay for it out of pocket. Unlike traditional medicine, weed is still considered an illegal drug at the federal level so insurance companies cannot provide any financial support. This is where compassion programs comes into play.

What is a compassion program?

Simply put, a compassion program allows cannabis businesses in California to donate tax-free weed products to low-income medicinal patients. Cannabis businesses were able to do this in the past but that changed when California voted to pass Prop 64 in 2016. The good thing about Prop 64 is that it made weed recreationally legal, but the bad thing about Prop 64 is that it added a $1,000 state tax to every pound of cannabis donated to legal patients. For this reason, many of the compassion programs stopped operating because it was not financially feasible for cannabis businesses to keep them going.

Fortunately, the passage of California Senate Bill 34 in March 2020 eliminated the state tax on donations, leading to the resurgence of compassion programs across the state.

Many types of compassion programs

Giving away free weed is obviously very awesome. But what may be even more awesome is seeing the long list of companies and organizations that are stepping up to help, including Eaze, the Weed for Warriors Project and Cookies.

With so many of these programs spread across the state, it's more than likely that there is a business or organization nearby who can help out if you're a low-income patient.

Business highlights

Runner's high... literally

Quora

We all know the typical stoner stereotypes - get high, lounge around on the couch and eat a week’s worth of food in one day. Although that may be true for some of us, ‘cannathletes’ are proving there are some not-so-lazy stoners out there.

Take Brian Lane as an example. Brian signed up to run the Rochester Marathon but woke up on the day of the race with second thoughts because he was so burned out with work and family stuff. After taking four heavy bong rips, Brian said screw it and made his way to the starting line.

Not sure if we can scientifically attribute Brian’s performance to the bong rips, but he ended up running the 26-mile race in just over 3 hours, finishing in 16th place out of 658 runners. He did so well that he even qualified for the Boston Marathon!

At first glance Brian may seem like an outlier but turns out there are many other ‘cannathletes’ out there and money is starting to roll into this segment of the market. Companies currently focused on ‘cannathletes’ include OFFFIELD - which produces sports drinks, gummies, and other athlete focused THC products - and LivWell, which produces THCV infused gummies.

Next time you don’t feel like getting up and going to the gym, take a couple of heavy bong rips. You might not make it to the gym but at least you’ll take a couple laps to the kitchen.

Next time you don’t feel like getting up and going to the gym, take a couple of heavy bong rips. You might not make it to the gym but at least you’ll take a couple laps to the kitchen.

Pot politics

Item of the week

With summer right around the corner, seltzer season is officially kicking off. If you're tired of all the basic alcohol seltzers, you should give the Cycling Frog hemp-based THC+CBD seltzer a try. Not only does it taste great, it also gives you a perfect high that will help you get through any family gathering. Even the 4th of July party that ends with your uncles getting in a fight.

Use the code seltzer25 at checkout to get 25% off your order.

Quick hits

Meme of the Week

Looks like some people are already feeling the recession

Best of social media

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