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Abstract
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Wilkins & Rychert [1] have noted that in commercial cannabis markets, just as in alcohol and tobacco markets, commercial entities will seek to maximize profit. One of the places in the supply chain where this happens is at the retail end, where cannabis buyers are at the counter interacting with sales staff.
The term 'budtender' is often used to describe salespeople employed to sell cannabis in medical and recreational outlets [2]. As one marijuana industry representative noted in an online guide to 'Getting hired as a budtender' in the medical cannabis industry: 'Patients can spend 90% or more of their time in‐store interacting with just one person: the budtender, which is why this position is probably the most important one inside a dispensary' [3].
Subritzky [2] noted that in Colorado, while budtenders often received training regarding their legal obligations, the training content was not specified in regulations but left to the discretion of business owners and marketing strategists. Reporting on discussions with budtenders during his field observations, Subritzky found that while larger chains tended to offer training regarding compliance obligations, product details and the sales process, public health considerations were rarely mentioned. Furthermore, citing a job advertisement for a budtender by an operator with 19 outlets, he noted that applicants were required to have existing 'knowledge of cannabis products as well as all current rules regarding retail and medical marijuana products' and to 'care', but sales performance was the dominant key performance indicator, as: 'Budtenders will be challenged by sales goals set by management' ([2], pp. 51-52).
There is a risk that, in a profit‐driven commercial market, business owners can publicly claim that their staff are educating their customers about their products from a public health and harm reduction perspective, but that the in‐store message from management to staff is 'sell, sell, sell'. This risk is likely to be...
Language: en |