France and Canada have the highest percentage of 15-year-old cannabis smokers among 42 well-off nations surveyed by the World Health Organization. When it comes to policing marijuana, France is far from the most laid-back country in Europe, so the findings come as something of a surprise. Amsterdam flaunts its cannabis cafes and Barcelona its private reefer clubs, but neither the Netherlands nor Spain were among the top eight nations in which teens admitted they had used cannabis in the last 30 days, according to the study. France dislodged Canada as No. 1 nation for teen tokers

A decision to stop a clean crack-pipe distribution program has disappointed those working to rehabilitate street addicts. Since 2008, Alberta Health Services had been giving out crack-pipe kits as part of the Safeworks program, an effort to reduce transmittable diseases. The kits contained a glass pipe, mouthpiece and cleaning tool and were handed out in an AHS van. More than 14,500 crack pipes were given out as of June 2011. The program was an effective first step in engaging hardcore, street-involved crack cocaine addicts. However, AHS has discontinued the Safeworks crack pipe program, citing the “potential for a legal challenge with respect to distribution.”

Health Canada rules for micro-cultivation of recreational cannabis have kept most of the pot sold in B.C. — and the expert growers who made B.C. bud a global brand — locked up in the grey market, industry leaders say. Licensing just 15 per cent of B.C.’s 6,000 grey market craft cannabis growers and raising production caps could legitimize nearly $3 billion in cannabis sales in two years, according to an analysis by the cannabis business accelerator Grow Tech Labs. The cost of entering the regulated market, combined with tight limits on capacity, conspire to create a business model that isn’t viable for growers currently working in the unregulated market, said CEO Barinder Rasode, a former Surrey city councillor. (See also: Health Canada 'build first' policy a blow to craft cannabis industry: critics)

Germany has awarded contracts to supply domestically-grown cannabis to two Canadian companies, as it seeks to develop its own medicinal marijuana industry and reduce reliance on imports. Drugs regulator BfArM said it would purchase 4,000 kg and 3,200 kg of cannabis over four years from German production subsidiaries of Canada’s Aurora Cannabis and Aphria, respectively. Another tender over a four-year harvest of 3200 kg has been delayed because an unidentified bidder who lost out is challenging the procedure with a regulator. The first home-grown harvest is slated for late 2020. (See also: Canopy Growth CEO expects to hit $1B in revenue for fiscal year 2020)

For three years, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users’ (VANDU) operated an unsanctioned, peer-run “safer smoking room” for crack users in a small ventilated washroom in its Downtown Eastside facility. It protected crack users from violence, connected them with health care services, kept them away from public spaces and prevented the spread of disease from pipe-sharing, according to the authors of a recently-published study titled “We need somewhere to smoke crack.”

Six months after cannabis was legalized in Canada, many of the people in search of a financial windfall appear ready to turn their attention elsewhere. “We’re very bullish on the globe, on the U.S. -- not so much on Canada,” Loren DeFalco, partner at CB1 Capital, a New York based cannabis-focused investment advisory company, said at a cannabis investors’ conference in Toronto. His sentiments were echoed, in whole or in part, by other industry insiders. Reasons for the pessimism around Canada included advertising restrictions making it difficult to build a popular brand, consumers being unsure where to find trustworthy knowledge about cannabis and the slow rollout of retail distribution in Ontario and B.C., which has left many with no easy access to a physical cannabis store.

Cam Battley believes that in the not-too-distant future, his company — one of Canada’s largest licensed producers — will be exporting a “significant chunk” of the cannabis it is growing domestically. “We have a massive market over in Europe, even in Latin America,” says Battley, chief corporate officer at Aurora Cannabis Inc. “These countries are legalizing medicinal cannabis one by one but they’re not growing as much as us. They’re going to need product, and we’ve already got the ball rolling on exporting.”  It’s a sentiment shared by other major producers that are spending tens of millions of dollars to build up international footholds with the intent of being key players in the emerging global cannabis industry. But before they can make good on those ambitions, some things will have to change.

Under the federal government’s new legal regime, for the first time in Canadian history, minors in possession of more than five grams of dried cannabis can catch criminal charges. Add that, according to the Toronto Star, people of colour are already three times as likely to be booked for cannabis crimes than white people, (despite not using it any more frequently) and, strangely, legalization could have even worse consequences for young black people. It’s evident that the stigma attached to cannabis use, which marketers are so eager to reduce and normalize, is not the same for white people as it is for black communities.

On August 17, 2020, the director of public prosecutions in Canada issued new guidelines under which federal prosecutors are to resort to criminal prosecution for possession only in the “most serious” cases – that is, where accompanying circumstances or conduct are deemed to pose a risk to others. It’s a potential, tentative de facto decriminalization. Recommended responses to possession of smaller quantities comprise addiction treatment (including Indigenous cultural or abstinence-based recovery centres), counseling, or restorative justice (including Indigenous restorative justice programs) among others. Some media outlets instantly announced that Canada was decriminalizing. Others, including Filter, have been warier.

The entrance of Constellation Brands in the cannabis industry has broken the insulation around cannabis companies — it is now incumbent upon the industry to embrace and prepare for the forthcoming wave of disruptive entrants that are better capitalized, more mature and better recognized than existing licensed producers. The cannabis industry is on fire. The combined market cap for public companies is over C$8.5B, provincial governments are preparing for the legalization of adult-use and, given that most governments are pursuing some version of a government-led model, licensed producers are identifying and securing supply agreement opportunities to lock in market share and stabilize revenues.

Ever since Canada became the first major country to legalize marijuana for adults a year ago, other nations have been paying attention. The small South American nation of Uruguay was the first to legalize marijuana for adults. New Zealand, Luxembourg and Mexico are among those that have looked to Canada for guidance or lessons, while Russia has chastised it for its “barefaced″ flouting of international anti-drug treaties. Mexico’s legalization is not likely to mirror Canada’s, where a few massive corporations have dominated production and more artisanal growers have largely been shut out. Russia laments the “barefaced″ and “blatant violation by Canada of its international obligations″ under anti-drug treaties.

The common wisdom among investors and analysts in the cannabis industry has been that bigger is better. They predict that cannabis will follow the path of alcohol after Prohibition ended in the U.S., quickly consolidating to a few major companies. Or even become like the oligopoly of tobacco. Since obtaining one of Canada’s earliest licenses for commercial cultivation of medical marijuana about five years ago, Canopy Growth had built a global weed empire. The company employed more than 2,000 people and had more than 4 million square feet of marijuana under cultivation, an 80,000-square-foot warehouse stocked to the rafters with inventory, and $78 million (U.S.) in fiscal 2018 revenue.

Given a choice, Canadians prefer to buy illicit weed. Nearly 80 per cent of all sales since legalization are from the “black market” – or more aptly named the “original market.” Contrary to what the government and the legal industry would have consumers believe, much of the illicit cannabis on the market today is of higher quality than that grown by licensed producers (LPs). The legalization of cannabis was a step in the right direction. But it also ushered in an elitist regulatory system that promoted big business to thrive in the face of the pre-existing culture and industry. The government encouraged titans of capital to build a new cannabis industry right on top of the original, underground industry, by people who know more about corporate financing models than how to grow the plant. 

The cannabis hype is about to come face-to-face with reality. After Canada legalizes recreational marijuana on Oct. 17, it will only take a quarter or two for clear winners and losers to emerge, according to investors and analysts who follow the sector. There may only be half a dozen major players left three years after legalization. The rest “are going to be bankrupt or out of business because their business models don’t work,” Eric Paul, from Ontario-based CannTrust, said. “This industry is far more brutal than most people understand.” So what will distinguish winners from losers? A meaningful presence in Canada’s recreational market combined with exposure to the international medical market is one key factor.

As Canada continues to work out the kinks of legalizing cannabis—and jurisdictions around the world follow suit—harm reduction advocates and drug policy researchers have their sights set on the regulation of all drugs, a reform they say is necessary to save lives and look at the issue from a public health perspective. Legalizing drugs would be different from decriminalizing drugs—the latter would make it legal to possess and use small amounts of banned substances but not to produce or sell them. Legalization would mean securing a safe supply of drugs and, with varying degrees of strictness, making those drugs accessible to the public.

Canadians with criminal records for drug possession will see them effectively vanish within two years after the government’s criminal justice reform bill becomes law — a move that could affect hundreds of thousands of people. Criminal records can prevent people from getting jobs, volunteer opportunities, housing and hinder their ability to travel. The automatic “sequestration” of drug possession records was made possible due to a New Democratic Party amendment to Bill C-5 and accepted by the government. “I said we needed a better bill... Highest on my list was trying to get rid of criminal records for simple possession,” said NDP justice critic Randall Garrison, who proposed the amendment.

Statistics Canada's quarterly report on cannabis prices suggests the cost chasm between legal and illegal versions of the drug is wide, and getting wider. The data agency reported that the price gap between the two types of cannabis is as wide as $4.72 a gram. Canada legalized recreational cannabis last October, but the rollout across the country has been plagued by delays, limited supply, and other logistical issues. Three months ago, StatsCan's report of the first full quarter of price information showed the gap between legal cannabis and the illegal variety was $3.62 a gram. That means the illegal stuff today is roughly half the cost of the legal variety. So it is not surprising that more than half — 59 per cent — of respondents said they purchased illegal cannabis during the period.

The difference between cannabis prices on the illicit and legal markets in the fourth quarter of last year widened slightly from the prior three-month period, according to new figures from Statistics Canada. The average price of cannabis in the illicit market during the fourth quarter of 2019 was $5.73 per gram, slightly higher than the $5.65 reported in the prior quarter but below the $6.44 mark tallied in the year-earlier period, data from StatsCan showed in its quarterly release of crowdsourced pricing information. The average price of legal cannabis in the fourth quarter was $10.30, edging higher from the $10.12 observed in the prior quarter and up from the $9.69 in the fourth quarter of 2018. (See also: Affordable legal cannabis should be priority as illegal pot prices drop, experts say)

On May 1, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland appeared before the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (AEFA) to discuss the international dimensions of Bill C-45 to regulate cannabis. She acknowledged that regulating cannabis would entail “contravening certain obligations related to cannabis under the three UN drug conventions,” adding that, “we have to be honest about that.” Asked about the ‘inter se’ proposal, whereby like-minded nations can negotiate amongst themselves to contract out of certain provisions of the treaty, Minister Freeland replied that the government had discussed the ‘inter se’ concept and that it was worth thinking about: “We are definitely open to working with treaty partners to identify solutions that accommodate different approaches to cannabis within the international framework.”

There’s a hint of disappointment in Courtney Betty’s voice when he talks about the present state of Jamaica’s legal medicinal cannabis regime. “I don’t think some of the companies coming in to do business here want to understand the social realities of Jamaica, or the real history of ganja in my country,” he said from his home in the country’s capital, Kingston. “I don’t think it is out of ignorance; I think this is just the way Western companies conduct business abroad.” By “Western” companies, Betty — the chief executive officer of Jamaican medical marijuana company Timeless Herbal Care — means Canadian. Since Jamaica legalized cannabis for medicinal cultivation and sale four years ago, a slew of Canadian pot companies have flooded the tiny island nation.