Employee safety and drivers insurance are among the issues retailers must tackle as they prepare to restart the service.

The updated rules also ban house brands and in-store advertising

But cannabis stores aren't causing more infections, retailers say, and shouldn't be used as a political prop to drive vaccinations.

Pre-rolls captured 19% of the province's overall cannabis sales, while milled flower sales doubled.

Weed delivery and curbside pickup may be sticking around in Ontario for good, if a provincial proposal goes through. Cannabis retailers have mixed feelings about the idea of delivery becoming permanent.

"I see our number-one status as a win for independents overall," she says. "We did this with our own vision, our own drive and our own investment."

"We have a temporary responsibility, which is a labor of love. It's definitely a charity that we're doing. Deliveries don't really make us money it just helps us serve the community better," she says, explaining there are the added costs of bringing on drivers and using a delivery app…

Cannabis delivery and curbside pickup are a labour of love, a public service and quite frankly the only responsible approach to help flatten the curve. Let us do our part.

"Most insurance companies aren't really looking at cannabis stores right now. It's even worse than the way banking is for weed businesses," notes McLean.

"It's still too slow," says Calyx + Trichomes Cannabis co-owner Jennawae McLean. "As an owner, I am holding back opening more locations because I quite frankly do not want to go through another year or two holding a lease with that type of uncertainty."

McLean says the eight retailers need to apologize and consider donating to Cannabis Amnesty, an organization that lobbies for expungement of cannabis-related charges to undo the some of the harms of cannabis prohibition.

For longtime cannabis advocates and former legacy market operators Jennawae McLean and Lorenzo Cavion, building authenticity into the four walls of their regulated store came naturally.