Marijuana Delivery is Back in San Jose
Eaze, often dubbed the “Uber of Marijuana” due to it’s rapidly growing acquisition of the cannabis delivery market and sleek marketing campaigns, was a popular entity in many districts within the Bay Area when they first opened three years ago.
San Jose, however, was one of a number of California cities that banned the delivery of medical marijuana in January of last year, after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act— a slew of bills designed to regulate the burgeoning industry in the state. The act permitted delivery but also gave individual cities the freedom to ban or regulate it— an option many, including San Jose and Emeryville, took, effectively making Eaze obsolete in the area.
This April, San Jose made an abrupt change, lifting the delivery ban and allowing two delivery services, Just Guild and Elemental Wellness, to resume delivery services. Eaze will make its comeback by way of The Guild, a San Jose-based dispensary, to deliver marijuana products to patients’ doors. What has not changed is the companies vetting system. Customers will still need to provide a valid doctor’s recommendation, which they can easily obtain through EazeMD for around $40.
This does not come without additional caveats, however. San Jose now requires that a delivery service gains the proper permits, background checks for drivers, and vehicle inspections before being issued a license to deliver cannabis. Any other business caught delivering cannabis in the city could face fines of up to $50,000 per offense per day.
San Jose, a city of 1 million people, has just 16 licensed dispensaries — and the city isn’t considering new applicants. Most of those dispensaries are clustered within a few blocks of two areas, either near the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds or the Bayshore Freeway.
“A lot of people are excited to see it (medical marijuana delivery) come back,” Hector Gonzalez, Director of Operations at the Guild marijuana dispensary, told KCBS, who originally reported on this story.
“Some folks simply don’t have the access, whether it’s to public transportation, or for any other means. Anything that helps provide additional access to this is a good thing,” Gonzalez said.
“The city was very thorough in making sure that only those acceptable drivers and programs were allowed, which may be why there is only two that have gone through the system so far,” Gonzalez said.
