*This article was submitted by longtime TCC contributor David Bass of Texas Veterans for Medical Marijuana:
How will this COVID-19 pandemic affect the black market for marijuana in Texas? Here, veterans, patients and caregivers who use cannabis as medicine have to take their chances on the black market. Just like products such as toilet paper, medical supplies and frozen food, I know marijuana users last week were stockpiling marijuana. Now many of us are on stay at home orders. A lot of businesses are shut down. Other businesses have been deemed essential and allowed to stay open such as grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, auto services and, of course, liquor stores. In many legal states, marijuana dispensaries have been designated as essential businesses, including here with the Texas Compassionate Use Program.
But of course your local marijuana dealer is not designated as essential, and allowed to deliver to your home or other curbside pick up. Those patients who have a stockpile of cannabis are good to go for now. But what happens when they run out?These are some of my questions about the marijuana black market in Texas during the pandemic
Will the supply of marijuana in Texas be affected? It is certain that brick weed from Mexico will still be coming across the border. Nothing has ever stopped that supply. But what about medical grade cannabis that comes to Texas from legal states? Will that supply be interrupted? And what about home grow operations in Texas? How will they continue to operate? Will they shut down sales and wait for the pandemic to pass? How many patients will turn to home grow and now, instead of buying an ounce, risk a felony?
If the supply runs low, how will prices be affected? The black market for cannabis in Texas is the perfect model of the free market, driven by supply and demand with prices determined by what the market will bear. It simply doesn’t have the regulation sometimes needed. The free market says that if supply is low and demand is high, prices go up. Will prices for black market marijuana go up drastically? Will there be hoarding and marijuana price gouging?
With these stay at home orders, how drastic will the controls be on our movement? That will affect the risk analysis that patients have to make when they run out of medicine and try to decide if it’s worth it to violate stay at home orders. If a patient is coming back home with marijuana and is stopped by police officers asking what they are doing, that is a huge risk. Friends of ours were reporting law enforcement pulling people over in Dallas and El Paso today. That is frightening for medical marijuana patients.
Our local dealers, who I consider to be entrepreneurs, are taking a personal risk by continuing to supply marijuana to their customers. They are interacting with people all day. How many dealers will decide it’s not worth the health risk and shut down until the pandemic is under control? How many of them will be infected by the virus if they stay in business? How might they change their business model to cope with pandemic conditions?
And last, how will law enforcement act in regards to marijuana arrests during the pandemic? Will it be business as usual, arresting people for possession and throwing them in jail? Will racial profiling increase? Or will law enforcement realize that arresting people for marijuana is not worth the risk to themselves, other prison inmates and the people being arrested? If they make the decision that arresng people for possessing marijuana during the pandemic is a waste of time and resources, will that logic hold true after the pandemic?We won’t know the answers to these questions until the pandemic is over. The solution to all of these potential problems, of course, is to legalize marijuana in Texas. Will the COVID-19 pandemic finally bring our legislators and law enforcement to their senses? I hope so.