Free or Discounted Weed: 8 Compassionate Care Programs for Cannabis Lovers

Compassionate care programs offer a range of discounts to patients. Photo credit: Envato.

Cannabis companies all over the U.S. and beyond are involved in compassionate care programs for their consumers. These programs are available to a variety of individuals and provide discounts based on the consumer’s needs. 

While some projects specialize in veterans or those with disabilities, some are available to low-income households. Compassionate care pricing programs can be found throughout states that offer recreational and/or medical consumption of cannabis.

Here are eight companies with compassionate care cannabis programs.

8 Discounted Programs for Weed Lovers

Bluebird Botanicals

Bluebird Botanicals is a Colorado-based CBD company that offers a number of different products and education programs for customers on the importance of clean ingredients in all of their CBD products and supplements. The company also partners with organic hemp farmers in Colorado.

Under their assistance programs, Bluebird offers a low-income program, a veterans’ program, and a long-term disability program. Their low-income program also involves discounts for those that have fallen below the federal poverty line and includes markdowns on full-price retail orders. 

Additionally, Bluebird offers discounts on retail orders for all U.S. veterans. These discounts also apply to their long-term disability program.

This is Jane Project

In celebration of Minority Mental Health Awareness month in July, This is Jane Project — a nonprofit organization — is releasing its compassionate care partnership program, Survivors Without Access (SWA). SWA aims to educate and support consumers on obtaining safe and reliable medicine.

The program is created in partnership with Dear Cannabis — a network of cannabis companies who provide free medical weed. While this is open to all California women trauma survivors, This is Jane Project’s specifically encourages BIPOC, Trans, and non-binary survivors to sign up for this opportunity. 

For this, This is Jane Project put out a call in early July for 25 participants near or around these California cities: West/North Hollywood, Santa Ana, Santa Rosa, and Oakland. This project is first-come, first-serve and is only available to individuals in California.

Sweetleaf

Based out of San Francisco, Sweetleaf is a donation-based charity organization. Sweetleaf began by providing cannabis to five AIDS patients in 1996, according to Sweetleaf. Now, they provide free medical cannabis to nearly 150 different low-income and terminally ill patients, veterans, and seniors. Since 1996, Sweetleaf has been able to give away around $2 million worth of cannabis.

RopaNa Wellness

RopaNa Wellness, meaning ‘to heal oneself’ in Sanskrit, is a CBD and hemp company based out of Vermont. They specialize in CBD products and education. RopaNa offers full-spectrum products and lab results are available on their website.

Their compassion care program involves not only a free one-year membership to RopaNa, but a 35% discount on all of their CBD goods. Additionally, this offer is applicable to patients with chronic illnesses and those with disabilities.

Lazarus Naturals

Lazarus Naturals in Oregon is a CBD-based company that specializes in farm-to-table hemp products. Workers at Lazarus Naturals pride themselves on transparency and top-notch farming practices.

Their Assistance Program is there for those who benefit from the uses of CBD, but are unable to access said products. For example, Lazarus Naturals provides 60% off for veterans. They also offer discounts to individuals on long-term disability, and low-income households. 

However, there is a $400 cap throughout each month that resets on the first of every month. Once the cap is reached, products return to full price.

Aurora Medical

For Candian patients, Aurora Medical contains a family of medical cannabis brands, including: Aurora, CanniMed and MedReleaf. There are a number of assistance programs available throughout Aurora Medical’s website.

Their compassionate pricing program offers 30% on all cannabis products to patients that qualify. Aurora Medical also offers 25% off medical cannabis to first responders and 10% off through their senior program. More specifically, the senior discount only applies to individuals 65 and older who do not qualify for previous compassionate pricing. 

In 2020, Aurora also introduced an emergency COVID-19 discount program for those dealing with a loss of income as a result of the pandemic.

Zion Medicals

Zion Medicals in Manchester, New Hampshire endeavors to create high-quality extracts for those in need. Founded by a chiropractor Brian Caruso and his wife, Jess Caruso, who has Lyme disease, Zion Medicals emphasizes the medical properties of CBD and hemp.

Their compassionate care program offers 40% off of a monthly shipment to patients who qualify for their program. The program also involves a monthly shipment of Zion Medical’s CBD products.

Red River Remedy

In Arkansas, Red River Remedy functions as a medical cannabis dispensary. Formed by medical professionals, the owners look to provide quality medical cannabis advice and care to customers.

Red River Remedy’s compassionate care program involves a variety of discounts for a number of individuals. For example, their veterans, disability, senior and financial need discount all provide 10% off of in-store products. Furthermore, there is a discount for terminally-ill patients, which provides up to 20% off of in-store products as well.

A number of dispensaries throughout the U.S. provide compassionate care programs with a variety of discounts applicable to individual needs. In fact, these programs are designed to make cannabis accessible for those at an economic or personal disadvantage. As a result, Emerald encourages consumers to look into their local shops for local or compassionate care programs.