{"id":3592,"date":"2022-01-11T18:28:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T18:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=58336"},"modified":"2022-01-11T18:28:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T18:28:39","slug":"budtenders-are-holding-back-cannabis-but-its-not-their-fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=3592","title":{"rendered":"Budtenders Are Holding Back Cannabis\u2014but It\u2019s Not Their Fault"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some pregnant and breastfeeding women aren\u2019t listening. Despite health professionals\u2019 warnings, the number of pregnant women using cannabis at least once a month doubled over the last decade to seven percent of women surveyed, according to one recent study. Though this upwards trend is partially a result of healthcare professionals\u2019 reluctance to talk about weed with their patients, researchers from Washington State University\u2019s College of Nursing identified another culprit: budtenders.<\/p>\n

In interviews with ten healthcare professionals, the researchers noted <\/a>universal opposition to using cannabis while pregnant or breastfeeding\u2014the same advice given about drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, though the issue<\/a> isn\u2019t as black-and-white as one would think. But when the researchers asked ten people who worked the sales counter at the local dispensary, they discovered \u201cmuch more positive\u201d attitudes around cannabis. In fact, a cannabis study revealed<\/a> states where marijuana is legal had a higher birth rate when compared to other states.<\/p>\n

\"pregnant<\/a>
PHOTO Lightfield Studios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though the budtenders tended to recommend products lower in THC and identified (correctly) that tobacco and alcohol were much more harmful than weed, this was still problematic. According to one budtender, most advice given at the dispensary counter amounted to anecdotal and unverified \u201cstoner science\u201d or quickly Googled tidbits. One takeaway, as the researchers wrote in a recent study published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, is that America needs better budtenders. <\/p>\n

\n

Workers at the counter ought to trained \u201con cannabis products\u201d and \u201chow to best serve perinatal customers\u201d before dispensing medical advice, they said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For an understanding of why they aren\u2019t\u2014and why, under current circumstances, this is a reasonable expectation\u2014you could take a quick trip to Denver, where Andrew Mieure broke into the cannabis industry as a budtender during Colorado\u2019s medical-cannabis era.<\/p>\n

Better off flipping burgers than selling buds<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Driving around the city during a visit in early 2020, Mieure noticed a sign outside a fast-food shop looking for workers: Now Hiring, $15 an hour, the sign said. He then compared that to job listings for budtender positions. The average pay for an entry-level counter worker at a cannabis dispensary was $13 to $14 an hour, he recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can literally flip burgers for better pay than selling an intoxicating drug that\u2019s still federally illegal,\u201d said Mieure, who became co-founder of Top Shelf Budtending<\/a>, an organization that curates sommelier-level cannabis experiences, but is still incredulous at the memory.<\/p>\n

For Mieure, complaints about budtending boil down to the simple cruelty of cold economic logic. \u201cI believe that when you\u2019re not paid properly, you\u2019re only going to do the work you\u2019re paid for,\u201d he said. And neither increased demand for cannabis during the COVID-19 pandemic nor budtenders\u2019 classification as \u201cessential workers\u201d has done anything to change this disparity.<\/p>\n

Though advanced certification and worker training courses do exist, there\u2019s little economic incentive, since the skills learned during a weeklong, $3,000 intensive training course don\u2019t translate into higher hourly wages. At some high-volume dispensaries with strict sales quotas, answering questions from a curious patron may actually be discouraged in favor of quickly ringing up a sale and moving onto the next customer. <\/p>\n

Low pay coupled with a lack of health and retirement benefits\u2014one former dispensary worker recalls being offered \u201cmedical weed\u201d when she inquired about her employers\u2019 healthcare plan\u2014ensures worker turnover is high. Thus, experienced workers\u2014and knowledgeable budtenders\u2014are a rarity. And so, after a cordial greeting and a recitation of whatever\u2019s on sale or on special, comes the same warmed-over \u201cstoner science\u201d passing for medical advice, followed by critiques from researchers complaining that budtenders are contributing to the delinquency of pregnant women.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
PHOTO Gracie Malley for Cannabis Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How to break this troubling cycle? A good start would be better-paid budtenders and a re-evaluation of the role of the counter help at dispensaries, which today is understood as little more sophisticated than a mere retail clerk. But demanding medical advice from an underpaid retail clerk may require an evolution in the dispensary model itself. Instead of convenience stores, liquor stores or even Apple stores, dispensaries should act more like lounges or clinics. And that will require a reevaluation of the entire dispensary retail model, starting with government regulations.<\/p>\n

Budtender, reimagined <\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Budtender<\/a> jobs pay poorly in part because\u2014like driving for Uber or Lyft or waiting tables at the local Applebee\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s a job almost anyone can get. Still viewed as a \u201ccool\u201d job, dispensaries report being flooded with applications for every opening. In this market\u2014and in a tough environment where every dispensary owner is trying to find efficiencies wherever possible\u2014dispensaries can afford to skimp on the labor (or so they believe).<\/p>\n

Few states require much in the way of qualifications (aside from, counterintuitively, a criminal record free of certain drug-related crimes<\/a>). Just 56 percent of budtenders surveyed during a 2016 review<\/a> received training of any kind before taking the job. What training there is doesn\u2019t have to meet any \u201cvetted or certified\u201d standards,\u201d said Mieure, who observed that other job sectors are held to much higher standards that the supposedly tightly regulated cannabis industry.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI always like to say that the people who do your nails or your hair go through more training,\u201d he said, when budtenders are far \u201cbeyond retail. We\u2019re part pharmacist, part psychologist, in some cases.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A state-certified minimum training course might help. So would worker rights won by labor unions, which have notched wins against employers who have tried to walk back certain basic rights. But so would a re-imagining of the dispensary experience. Instead of a five-minute \u201cin-and-out,\u201d what if a dispensary was a social gathering space\u2014what if, instead of like a corner liquor store, it operated more like a bar?<\/p>\n

Some cannabis aficionados bristle at comparisons to the alcohol industry. After all, Colorado legalized cannabis in 2012 on the strength of an advertising campaign that juxtaposed cannabis as a safer alternative. But with its tasting notes hinging on the finer points of climate and terroir, high-end cannabis begs comparisons to nothing more so much as fine wine.<\/p>\n

That said, it\u2019s wishful thinking to expect a sommelier to appear at your corner liquor store to help you choose between a jug of Gallo or a box of Franzia. However, the time and space for a discriminating selection and an in-depth conversation is a perfect fit for dispensaries that are social-consumption lounges\u2014a concept seen during the medical-cannabis era that hasn\u2019t quite transitioned to adult-use. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to see the specialty budtender come into play with consumption lounges,\u201d Mieure predicted. Fair pay for a position like that could command as much as  $55,000 a year, with management scraping the six-figure mark. And in an industry supposedly worth tens of billions, why not? The cost of not doing so, as the Washington State researchers found, is bad advice that carries an even steeper bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some pregnant and breastfeeding women aren\u2019t listening. Despite health professionals\u2019 warnings, the number of pregnant women using cannabis at least once a month doubled over the last decade to seven percent of women surveyed, according to one recent study. Though this upwards trend is partially a result of healthcare professionals\u2019 reluctance to talk about weed with their patients, researchers from Washington State University\u2019s College of Nursing identified another culprit: budtenders. In interviews with ten healthcare professionals, the researchers noted universal opposition to using cannabis while pregnant or breastfeeding\u2014the same advice given about drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, though the issue… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}