BREAKING: 420 Cancelled

Ok, not really. But the bad news is that sadly, in the current state of things, smoking weed is considered a bad idea, CNNhealth reports.

"Don't confound your caregivers with trying to sort out whether your dry cough and change in behavior is due to the fact that you're a novice with marijuana or it's associated with Covid-19,” says Dr. Mitchell Glass in the article. To this I say, “shots fired sksksk.” However, there is an important message under the sassy and nearly joyful attitude in which Dr. Glass delivers this disappointing advice.

According to Glass, the negative effects of chronic weed smoking are too close for comfort to the symptoms of chronic bronchitis, which, in turn, looks very similar to some of the signature symptoms of COVID-19. So, the logical conclusion is to stop smoking it, right? Well, according to recent studies, marijuana withdrawal is also increasingly being recognized as a real problem.

You might argue, for these chronic tokers who are trying to take their health seriously, a good solution might be edibles. This is a great option for people living in areas in which weed is legal and edibles are readily available. However, many places haven’t legalized weed yet, so ingesting a healthier form of marijuana without stinking up your kitchen or seriously miscalculating potency can be a big challenge.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of Silica's home state and U.S. pandemic epicenter New York, for example, has been teasing the prospect of legal weed for years. However, to the disappointment of every 420-enthusiast in The Empire State, he recently announced that legal weed is very unlikely to come to New York in 2020.

And while the prospect of legalizing weed might seem like a low priority issue during a global pandemic, it would solve a lot of issues right now, and not just ones for privileged stoners. Statistics on marijuana arrests show POC in low-income communities are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possessing weed, while usage is about equal among Black and white people. This, in combination with the fact that the coronavirus has been disproportionately affecting lower-income people of color and incarcerated people of color (many of whom are caught in the crossfire as low-level drug offenders), is a recipe destined to have devastating consequences on these communities.

The issue becomes more exacerbated due to limited financial and health resources during the COVID-19 outbreak. Not only would legalizing weed and expunging the records of past "offenders" begin to solve density and exposure issues in confined prison environments, it would also free up monetary resources to help these prisoners (and others) get back on their feet.

So, while states like New York once again wait for their leaders to do anything at all to help remedy a situation with very clear solutions, we are left imagining greener pastures. Perhaps, in an alternate dimension, Cynthia Nixon would have been elected Governor of New York in 2018, thousands of people would be free from jail and at a significantly lower risk of being exposed to COVID-19, and Carrie Bradshaw would be narrating our lives as we pop an edible to a funky Salsa-inspired marimba jazz riff.

Read more on CNN.