In This Country, Uber Eats To Deliver Marijuana To People's Doorstep: Report

The partnership will mark the first time Uber has facilitated the delivery of marijuana anywhere in the world.

A delivery person wearing an Uber Eats backpack (Source: File photo/AFP)

Cannabis customers in Toronto will be able to request cannabis deliveries through Uber Eats beginning Monday. On Sunday, Uber Technologies Inc.'s food delivery platform announced a partnership with online marijuana marketplace Leafly that will see it process pot orders for retailers Hidden Leaf Cannabis, Minerva Cannabis, and Shivaa's Rose.

Leafly has three Toronto-area stores lined up to launch the program. Instead of Uber drivers, store employees will be in charge of the pickup, according to the company's website. 

The partnership will mark the first time Uber has facilitated the delivery of marijuana anywhere in the world.

"This is the first time marijuana delivery has been available on a third-party food ordering platform like Uber Eats," according to cannabis website Leafly.

"This collaboration should aid in the fight against the marijuana black market and promote safe driving."

"Leafly has been empowering the cannabis marketplace in Canada for more than four years, and we support more than 200 cannabis retailers in the GTA. We are thrilled to work with Uber Eats to help licenced retailers bring safe, legal cannabis to people across the city," Leafly CEO Yoko Miyashita stated in a press release.

Consumers, who must be age 19 or older, will place orders on the Uber Eats app, which stores can receive and respond to through Leafly's software. The retailers then send staff certified under Ontario's cannabis retail education program, CannSell, to drop off purchases to shoppers, whose age and sobriety are checked on delivery, the release stated. 

Uber positioned the partnership as a way to tackle the illicit cannabis market, which licensed pot producers have long blamed for curbing sales.

"First and foremost, we see this as a critical piece to helping discourage impaired driving, and secondly, this is just another initiative that can help combat the illegal cannabis market, which still makes up more than 40 per cent of cannabis sales in Ontario today," Lola Kassim, Uber Eats Canada's general manager, told CBC Toronto.

Canada became the first major Western country to legalise and regulate the sale and recreational use of cannabis in 2018. That brought an end to nearly a century of marijuana prohibition. The change was applauded by marijuana enthusiasts and investors in a burgeoning industry that has seen marijuana stocks soar on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges, but it was sharply criticised by some health professionals and opposition politicians.

(With Inputs From Agencies)