CANADIANS BRACE FOR CULTURAL CHANGES AS WEED BECOMES LEGAL
Questions linger over state control of the black market and consumers’ habits By Dan Bilefsky and Catherine Porter
For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalise recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks. The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”
Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.
But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.
People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalisation of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture since the end of Prohibition.
Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.
The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalisation was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect on Oct 17, Mr Trudeau said on Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.
But proponents of marijuana legalisation may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.
Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide, predicted that veteran consumers would come around.
“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,” he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides, and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”
The Quebec Cannabis Co, the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorising it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.
Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.
At the official stores, one gramme will cost about US$6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.
While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke, ingest and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.
Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries found in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.
The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.
Although Canada legalised medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.
In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down.