Cannabis legalization is CP’s story of the year
Pot topped business news in 2018
Canada’s trail-blazing move to legalize cannabis for recreational use, which sparked an entirely new industry and had wide-ranging implications for nearly every facet of society, has been voted The Canadian Press Business News Story of the Year.
The term “disruption” in business has become so overused that it has become an empty cliché, but it is warranted in the case of pot legalization, said Andrew Meeson, deputy business editor at the Toronto Star.
“It’s hard to think of an area in Canada that hasn’t been shaken up: not just commerce (from criminal act to booming startup to take over target in the blink of an eye), but also policing, health care, justice, politics. Even culture ( just ask Tommy Chong),” he said.
“If that doesn’t make it the business story of the year, I don’t know what would.”
In an annual poll of the country’s newsrooms conducted by The Canadian Press, business editors and reporters across the country chose cannabis legalization in a landslide, with 60 per cent of the votes cast.
The terse negotiations between Canada, U.S. and Mexico towards a new North American Free Trade Agreement was a distant second with 30 per cent of votes.
Canada’s pipeline conundrum, with the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion now in limbo after a court overturned its regulatory approval in August and a U.S. court throwing out the Keystone XL pipeline’s presidential permit in Novem- ber, came in third out of eight possible candidates with 10 per cent of the vote.
“Pipelines would have won, hands down if it weren’t for the creation of an entirely new industry in Canada,” said David Blair, a business columnist with CBC Radio.
“Rarely, if ever, do journalists get to cover the opening of a new market, especially one that is as controversial as cannabis.”
The world was watching when the country made history with the first legal sale of nonmedicinal pot just after midnight on Oct. 17 in Newfoundland and Labrador, due to its time zone being 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Canada.
It marked the beginning of what the New York Times dubbed Canada’s “national experiment,” and the culmination of months, if not years, of preparation by legislators and law enforcement officials at all levels and in each province, territory and municipality.
While Oct. 17 represented an extension from the initial target set for July, and licensed producers ramped up production in the lead-up, long lines of customers were met with widespread product shortages online and in the relatively few bricks-and-mortar stores that were ready on day one.
Still, many Canadians were simply elated to be able to buy government-sanctioned pot after nearly 100 years of prohibition.
“My new dealer is the prime minister!” said Canadian fiddler and pop star Ashley MacIsaac, who in 2001 had been arrested for possession in Saskatchewan.