Yelp Chooses To Discriminate Against Cannabis Businesses

Yelp is one of the most popular websites in the United States. Yelp is a website and mobile app which houses reviews about businesses. Yelp also provides a reservation service called Yelp Reservations.

For many businesses, a positive footprint on Yelp can mean the difference between thriving or failing because of how many consumers rely on reading reviews on the platform when making their purchasing decisions.

Unfortunately for cannabis businesses that are licensed in legal states, the Yelp platform chooses to discriminate against cannabis companies on its platform, as recently covered by Marijuana Moment:

Yelp is no longer offering two key advertising features to marijuana-related businesses, the company confirmed to Marijuana Moment.

Two cannabis businesses have shared an email from Yelp announcing the policy change. It states that the company had “unfortunate news” and that it will be removing both the “Business Highlights and Portfolio advertising options for cannabis-related businesses, effective immediately.”

We have come a long way as a cannabis movement and industry, however, as this latest development clearly demonstrates, we still have quite a ways to go. Cannabis might be going mainstream, however, as long as this type of discrimination against the industry exists, we clearly have not reached the finish line.

Hopefully, Yelp restores its previous policy. Legal cannabis businesses deserved to be treated equally with other businesses that are legal at the state level in so many states.