When I was a young parent trying to make ends meet on a limited income, I took a second job delivering pizza. I enjoyed it. Delivering got me out and about. It gave me the opportunity to drive (which I loved), and the combination of delivery charges and tips meant I was making good money. I am no longer young, but I wonder if cannabis home delivery is at all comparable.
Would you take a job as a cannabis delivery driver? Doing so could be an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an exploding industry. You could start as a driver, then work your way up the ladder to a management position. Who knows? You could eventually know enough about the business to start your own company.
Rules Vary by State
Just as cannabis rules differ by state, so do delivery rules. Not every state with an active cannabis program allows home delivery. Out in Utah, a state no one expected to green light medical cannabis, home delivery was approved in 2021. Even so, the rules governing delivery services are strict.
According to Salt Lake City’s Beehive Farmacy, cannabis deliveries must be conducted in unmarked vehicles. Delivery drivers can only deliver to residential addresses, and those addresses must be identical to the patient addresses listed in the state’s medical cannabis database.
In addition, deliveries can only be made to residential addresses. Drivers cannot deliver to commercial addresses, nor can they leave packages with anyone other than the intended recipient. That person must possess a valid medical cannabis card. And no, delivery drivers cannot leave packages on the porch. Packages must be hand-delivered to their recipients.
A Lot of Driving Involved
Delivering for Beehive Farmacy in Salt Lake City could mean never leaving the metropolitan area. But if the pharmacy sold cannabis products to customers living in rural parts of the state, you could end up doing an awful lot of driving. It is not like taking a pizza down the street and getting it delivered before it gets cold. Delivering medical cannabis to rural areas could have you putting in hundreds of miles per day.
For someone like me, that is not a problem. I have had other driving jobs in the past where I did just that. I like putting in the miles. But for someone else, driving out into the middle of nowhere to make a delivery might not be ideal.
Potential Security Concerns
The biggest challenge for cannabis delivery right now is security. Thanks to federal law, the cannabis industry is still largely a cash industry. Unfortunately, that makes delivery drivers targets. There are ways around it, including a small number of electronic payment systems now starting to crop up around the country. But the only real solution is for Washington to either decriminalize cannabis or pass legislation that gives banks the freedom to service cannabis businesses without the threat of repercussions.
For now, delivery drivers deal with considerable amounts of cash. There is always the risk of being robbed. For the record, that’s why Utah rules stipulate the use of unmarked vehicles. Lawmakers do not want to make it easy for criminals to identify delivery companies or drivers.
I might consider delivering pizza again if I needed the money. I am not so sure about cannabis. There are still too many unknowns in a business flush with cash and competing with the black market. How about you? Would you take a delivery job? The jobs are certainly there. It is really a question of whether or not the work is appealing to you.