Boulder will soon be home to two dispensaries legally delivering medical marijuana.

Helping Hands Cannabis on Pearl Street recently procured its license for delivery and expects to begin service to medical patients in mid-May, according to co-owner Johnny Kurish.

Kurish decided to offer delivery as a way to safely reach patients during the pandemic. Helping Hands closed voluntarily before Gov. Jared Polis issued a statewide stay-at-home order in March “because we couldn’t see a responsible way to conduct business inside of our premises and still be cognizant of public health and our staff’s health,” Kurish said.

When he found out that Boulder’s medical marijuana code allowed for delivery, he knew that would be a better option.

About 20% of Helping Hands’ business is in medical marijuana; the rest is sold on the recreational side of the dispensary, Kurish said.

“We’ve seen people just let their medical cards expire over the years,” Kurish said. “But I do expect these delivery rules to bring some people back into the medical world.”

Legislators legalized cannabis delivery with the passage of House Bill 1234 in 2019. The law permits medical marijuana deliveries to start in 2020 followed by recreational cannabis deliveries in 2021, but left it to municipalities to individually decide if they will allow the services.

So far, Boulder and the nearby town of Superior are the only districts known to allow marijuana delivery. The Dandelion dispensary in Boulder was the first dispensary to obtain its delivery license and began servicing local patients in March.

Helping Hands is still finalizing many of the details of its delivery program, but Kurish said starting in May, customers will be able to place orders through the dispensary’s website. They’ll be able to pay with a debit account, too, thanks to an app called Strike, which the dispensary is using to collect payments.

Delivery has been a hot-button issue during the coronavirus pandemic.