While cannabis may be readily available for most Canadians, many mobility-impaired medical patients suffer a lack of accessibility. Delivery service founder Kid Potter aims to fill that void, all while creating job opportunities for marginalized groups.
The company also is Vancouver, British Columbia‘s only all-female, queer-founded, cannabis delivery service.
There are about 479,000 documented medicinal cannabis patients in Canada, according to Statistics Canada’s fourth quarter 2018 report. Many of these medical cannabis patients rely on their medicine to perform basic daily tasks: avoiding debilitating pain, migraines, and seizures.
After watching her cousin and best friend go through treatment for stage IV cancer, Potter realized that highly fatigued and mobility-impaired medical patients needed an accessible cannabis purchasing system.
“I saw how much these products helped them get through chemotherapy,” Potter explained, as medical cannabis helped both her cousin and best friend combat the ugly side-effects of chemotherapy — which greatly contributed to their quality of life during treatment.
Moved by the lack of purchasing accessibility, with a decade in the tech industry, Potter began to form what is now her Vancouver-based cannabis-delivery service Order Jane.
“Cannabis needs to be accessible to people who have disabilities, people who are battling illnesses, and people who have general mobility issues. We have tons of customers who thank us for giving them that relief without having to leave the house,” Potter said.
Unlike Canada Post services, customers purchasing through Order Jane receive same-day delivery, with an estimated one- to two-hour wait. Customers may choose from a variety of premium cannabis flower, edibles, tinctures, vape pens, and cartridges, concentrates, topicals, accessories, and prerolls. Its wide range of products includes both THC and non-intoxicating cannabidiol (CBD) products.
After completing an order through the company’s website, customers are able to track their driver in real time by a text message link.
“It’s like tracking an Uber,” Potter explained.
Visually impaired customers may place orders by using the voice function on their phone to either call or text the company, empowering customers who may otherwise be reliant on a loved one or health-care assistant.
While Order Jane may have emerged because of flaws in accessibility, Potter explained that customers are choosing her discrete ordering system for a number of reasons.
“[Customers won’t] be spotted in a dispensary, or whatever it is that is preventing them from purchasing, because of that stigma,” Potter said. Order Jane’s system is door-to-door and completely confidential.
Promoting safe driving, Potter said she hopes her easy ordering system and quick order turnaround also will keep those already impaired off the roads, combating the widespread concern of intoxicated drivers.
Potter’s main aims are to provide customers with access to premium products, a stress-free system that enables patients to purchase with ease, and respect customers’ confidentiality.
“Being a queer woman founder, diversity in my team is just as important as the [marginalized] consumers we are targeting,” she said.
While Potter said the cannabis industry is mainly dominated by cisgender males (men who identify as their birth sex), she added that the budding industry offers her many advantages.
“It’s only ever made me louder,” she said, in regard to the lack of diversity that she has experienced in other industries.
“Because the industry is so new, it’s actually growing in a time where people really value diversity more than ever. That is the huge benefit this industry has, over other industries,” she said.
With future plans to include other members of marginalized groups, Order Jane sets a precedent for the industry to expand its standards of ethics.
“Eventually, I would want to get to a point where all of my live-chat agents are people who are hard of hearing […]. I really do value diversity in my company, and in my previous companies as well. I think this is a really awesome space for queer people and people of minorities, in general, to move into early, so we can avoid the lack of diversity the technology industry holds.”
This article is republished from Daily Hive under a content syndication agreement. Read the original article here.
