On being Essential and Feeling Essential

Before Marijeanne Santina was born, her parents received a letter from her soon to be grandmother. You should not name your child this because she is going to be associated with marijuana and that's bad. Choose something else. Twenty-two years later, Marijeanne, or MJ, is pursuing a career in the cannabis industry.

Santina has been a budtender for eight months. The state of California has labeled dispensaries as essential businesses for not only medical cannabis users but recreational users as well. That means that she is still working full-time at the Elemental Wellness Center in San Jose.

She agrees that dispensaries are essential for their customers and her passion for helping those customers is what helps her get through this. “You never know why someone is actually using cannabis,” she says.

When news first broke about the shelter in place orders in California, people flocked into her store. They were panicking, thinking that dispensaries would be shut down because of the crisis. The very day the governor called the shelter-in-place order, people were lined up out the door. Santina and her coworkers had been in the store all day and had no idea what the situation was. They didn’t yet know about the precautions they needed to be taking.

The quarantine hasn't slowed the flow of people. Santina has noticed that people are consuming more cannabis during this time. Customers are even coming in more frequently rather than stocking up as they have more time on their hands. Some stock up. Some people consider buying more, and she always encourages it. She thanks them when they do. She loves it when people stock up.

“I’m trying to encourage less traffic because it is still public health. It doesn't matter that we are a dispensary. Still, there are lots of people coming in and out of the door. And they go everywhere.”

Some customers tell her that they come in just to see the employees. They say they are the only people they get to see during this “COVID thing.” Santina thinks it's heartwarming, but at the same time always tells them that they should be getting delivery. Their own health and the health of the employees are at risk.

Just today she helped a man who was 76 and a few days ago helped a woman who was eighty. People eighty and up are rare without a pandemic. The older age group is usually from the sixties to the early seventies. They buy edibles with THC to get high and topical creams to help with pain relief.

But now, when those few older people come in, she feels obligated to tell them she doesn't think that they should even be at the store. The 76-year-old man that came in was wearing his own protective gear but the eighty-year-old woman that she served just a few days ago wasn't wearing any. The old woman was an essential worker herself and was out running all of her errands at once. There was no one else to do it for her.

Right now, all the workers are required to wear gloves. Masks are optional, and Santina always opts in as she has asthma. They sanitize with a rubbing alcohol solution between every customer. In and out of work Santina is taking every precaution—drinking lots of water, trying to eat healthy foods, staying active. But there's only so much they can do.

“We're trying to not lose our minds too,” she says. “A lot of it is not getting stressed about going to work every day. Everyone is going through a different emotion right now and everyone has stresses.”

The people coming into her store definitely have stresses. Some couples come in and get upset when told to stay six feet apart. One girl looked at Santina as she was kindly reminding her to stay six feet apart from the man she came in with.

“Why? He’s inside me at any other time,” the girl remarked. Santina kept it professional, but that was not what she needed to hear.

“It's like they forget we are people and we have to remind them.”

One man came in wearing rubber gloves and after ordering got some of the hand sanitizer the store keeps out for their customers. He then proceeded to rub the hand sanitizer into his gloves. Santina thought it was a little weird but that maybe he was just trying to stay as clean as he could. But then, he took another pump and rubbed it through his hair as if it were gel. He signed his receipt and walked out.

The worst are those that believe the pandemic is just a hoax. One woman came in screaming at the security guard about new safety measures. Plastic screens were just added between the customers and the registers for extra safety. That angry woman isn’t the only customer who has come in thinking this all to be a hoax. Santina notes that these people are always the ones taking no precautions—no masks, no gloves, no concern to socially distance. Even with the new safety screens, people are insistent on touching everything. One man tried touching the computer screen that displays the menu through the plastic, even though it is the one thing catching all the germs of the people that come in.

Not only have the people and their mannerisms changed, but what they are buying has changed too. Santina has noticed an increase of interest in edibles, particularly those of hybrid strain. “They don't want to be completely knocked out, but they want to be relaxed.”

In terms of flower, more people are choosing Indica strains because they are getting anxious. What is most exciting to Santina is that more people are trying CBD. They're getting more interested in asking more questions that they wouldn't have before.

The educational aspect of cannabis in relation to health is why Santina became interested in the industry in the first place. About two years ago, Santina’s grandfather was nearing the end of his life. She watched him suffer through the process of slowly dying. Around the same time, she was venturing into the world of cannabis and was slowly becoming a regular user. Wait, she thought, this could actually help with pain. It helps with my pain. It could help him sleep instead of him having to take morphine.

“I was starting to have these thoughts, but it was too late in the process to actually do something about it.” Santina knew that it helped her, and she knew other people that liked it, but there wasn’t enough information available to her on its effects for her to risk it. The morphine stopped working and she and her brother considered bringing him an edible. The next day, he passed.

“Looking back on it now, if we’d had cannabis, I would have loaded him up!”

After graduating from CSU Monterey Bay with a Social and Behavioral Science degree with a concentration in Sociology a year later, Santina knew she wanted to try to break into the cannabis industry.

While working as an activities director at a senior home for people with Dementia and Alzheimer's, Santina applied to dispensaries all around Monterey and her home town of San Jose. She saw a YouTube video for a high-end San Jose dispensary. They had no job openings, but she emailed in her resume anyway, along with a cover letter, and a week or two later started the interviewing process. Shortly after, she was hired as a “Wellness Consultant” at the Elemental Wellness Center.

She even turned her parents on to using cannabis, along with some of her parents’ friends and other family members. “I’m changing them,” she says. “It’s all about getting the stigma out of peoples’ minds.”

Her parents have always been supportive, and that extends to their habits during this crisis. Santina lives in her childhood home with her parents, but right now she's home alone. Her parents left to stay in their family cabin in Lake Tahoe to ride out the shelter-in-place order.

“They took the dogs and themselves. They have been up there, and they will not come down because I’m still working—and they don't want to risk it.”

Santina is at enough of a risk herself. She's had to sit down and think about the worst-case scenario. If she gets this, she'll have to be on a ventilator because of her asthma. It could happen. That doesn't stop her ever-positive outlook.

“I'm so grateful though that we have the option to social distance. On the other side of the coin, it does suck. But I’m grateful for [my parents’] health more than anything and I’m grateful that we do have that because not everyone has a family cabin. Not everyone has even their own room to themselves or their own bed so I can’t complain.” She doesn't want anyone to get this, no matter what the age.

Santina thinks this is an opportunity for things to change. At least, after this is all over, maybe they will go in the direction that she wishes. “My whole goal is to eventually merge cannabis and seniors.”

Right now, there aren't too many options for merging senior care with cannabis use. The position she wants is either something she will have to make herself or will have to build from a different role.

Maybe she will pave the way. Maybe one day soon, Santina thinks we will see it merge with Hospice care—the same care that her grandfather got at the end of his life. And that's exactly where she wants to be.

“This position I want is either something I’ll have to make myself. Or, I’ll have to start somewhere in a job is not quite it and then lead a program of my own. But my career is definitely starting.”