4/20 celebrations canceled, but marijuana sales strong during pandemic

Coronavirus may have prevented any parties celebrating 4/20 — the unofficial holiday of marijuana — but legal pot sales in Pennsylvania remain strong during the pandemic.

“Now you have things like stimulus checks hitting,” said Chris Kohan, co-founder of The Healing Center, which has dispensaries in Monroeville, Washington and Cranberry. “We saw this week a huge increase, again, so for us we’ve continued to grow in patients as well as volume, and we’ve had to learn to do it in a smaller amount of hours.”

The Healing Center and other dispensaries have reduced hours and introduced new safety measures. They’ve been deemed essential by the state, which means they can remain open despite the shutdown of most other businesses.

“It has meant a lot of cleaning, a lot of monitoring social distancing, a lot of extra work,” said Tim Hawkins, Pennsylvania market president for Green Thumb Industries. The company owns seven Rise dispensaries in Pennsylvania — including one in Latrobe — and operates three others on behalf of other companies.

For many dispensaries, 4/20 isn’t a big deal even in a normal year.

“Pennsylvania is a medical market, and we’ve always been instructed by the Department of Health not to celebrate it in any way,” said Hawkins.

Not all dispensaries share that viewpoint.

“Everyone has a lot of fun over the holidays,” said Will Bookwalter, general manager of Delta 9 in Lawrenceville.

Delta 9 is owned by Keystone Integrated Care and also has a dispensary in Greensburg. The dispensaries’ products are on sale through April to celebrate 4/20, though its locations are closed on Mondays and won’t be open on the big day.

The 2020 Pennsylvania Cannabis Festival was scheduled for April 18-19 in Kutztown, Berks County. It has been postponed until October because of coronavirus.

Sales have been steady during the pandemic, Bookwalter said. The biggest change is not how much marijuana people are buying — it’s how they’re buying it.

Delta 9 introduced online ordering last month, and since then it’s become the most popular option for patients, he said. On Friday morning, almost 80% of the day’s orders were placed online.

“It has just blown up,” Bookwalter said. “We had close to 20 orders before we even opened this morning.”

Delta 9 introduced curbside pickups, which means patients don’t need to leave their cars.

The state changed its marijuana regulations last month to allow curbside pickup, but it hasn’t worked out for every dispensary, Kohan said. The Healing Center tried curbside pickup at its locations, but the lines of cars created traffic jams, he said.

All Rise dispensaries have switched to online-only ordering, Hawkins said. At some locations, like Latrobe, customers aren’t allowed in the building — all product is delivered to their cars. Other locations don’t have a way to offer safe curbside pickup, so they allow customers inside but limit the number of orders to prevent crowding.

Despite reduced hours and limited hours, sales have remained steady from pre-pandemic levels, according to Hawkins.

The Healing Center’s offered online ordering before coronavirus hit, but the option has become more popular over the last month, Kohan said.

Curbside pickup might not last much longer than the pandemic, Bookwalter said. The state described the regulation change as temporary, and could revert to the prior, stricter rules in the future.

Some changes that dispensaries have made are likely here to stay, even when coronavirus ends, according to Kohan. The Healing Center has installed Plexiglas protectors at its cash registers, which aren’t going anywhere, he said. Extensive cleaning measures will probably stay in place, and the pandemic will inform dispensaries’ disaster preparedness plans for the future.

“There’s a lot of things that will stay on, and we will learn from this,” Kohan said.

Walters agreed, but is eager for to the day when things start to look a little more normal.

“We’re really looking forward to getting back to face-to-face customer contact, and being able to talk to people,” he said.