Pot For Pets: Not Just a Pet Lover’s Venture

Americans love their pets. According to the American Pet Products Association, we spend roughly $58 Billion a year on our pets. In fact, some people love their pets so much that they pamper their pets with pet spas or luxury pet hotels. They’ll take them to pet therapists to work on their attachment issues, and dress them in couture fashion. There is a pet equivalent for almost every human product you can imagine, and now there’s even an emerging market of medical marijuana for pets.

When you think of pets on pot, you likely think of funny YouTube videos where the cat learns to chase its tail or the dog eats from the food bowl while lying down. However, you may see a change in these videos because many pet owners are discovering that medical marijuana is one of the few things that can give their furry loved ones relief.

In a guest article published on peta.org, Dr. Amanda Reiman shares her experience with using cannabis for her ailing pet. After 11 years of companionship, Dr. Reiman’s cat, “Monkey,” was diagnosed with inoperable intestinal cancer. Dr. Reiman was faced with limited options. “The vet believed that the best course of action was to keep her feeling as good as we could for as long as possible,” Reiman recounts. “The cancer has caused her to lose a lot of weight, and she was having trouble sleeping. I decided to mix a little cannabis oil in with her wet food and was astounded at the difference.”

Within no time Monkey was running and playing around like a kitten again, bringing great relief and joy to both Dr. Reiman and Monkey. Although the cannabis oil couldn’t cure Monkey’s inoperable intestinal cancer, it provided enough relief so that she could live the rest of her days pain free and so that Dr. Reiman could “enjoy her for the kitty she was, not watch her slowly disappear.”

Stories like Dr. Reiman’s are convincing a growing number of pet owners to try medical cannabis and with this growing demand, businesses like Seattle-based Canna-Pet are entering the market. Canna-Pet is a high CBD, low THC, supplement meant to ease a variety of painful ailments for pets such as nausea, anxiety, joint pain and arthritis. In many ways, Canna-Pet is similar to the kind of medical marijuana being approved across the country in states like Missouri, Florida and Georgia. Unlike its human counter-part, Canna-Pet is 100 percent legal and as of yet unregulated. Given the trend of overall cannabis legalization, it is not likely for such products to be banned.

As time goes on and more pet owners become savvy to the benefits of medicating pets with cannabis, this niche market will become a much larger and broader market than some may realize. Aside from Canna-Pet, almost no other company is in the cannabis trade for pets so there is a lot of room to grow. If you are looking to enter the marijuana market and invest in a specialty product, medical marijuana for pets is an excellent niche to investigate because a little bit of capital may go a long way.

William Sumner, a freelance writer and marijuana journalist, was a staff writer for MJINews from May 2014 through February 2018. You can follow him on Twitter @W_Sumner.

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