Cannabis Law Change – Cannabis News, Lifestyle

Changing the Cannabis Law? The Canadian government says it will review and amend it as soon as possible. But the deadline for starting the review has passed eight months. Health Canada, which is scheduled for October 2021, will not comment on when the review will take place, only that any change will come from a “credible, evidence-based process”.

Health Canada also said the review could take up to 18 months. The recent federal budget promised a cannabis industry roundtable, but no details were released. But some remain skeptical that meetings between government bureaucrats and industry insiders will do anything but help the larger producers at the expense of the smaller artisan workshops.

Forward Regulatory Plan

But will a review and amendment of the cannabis law benefit everyone? So far, the federal government is planning to update the cannabis law through some regulatory changes that Health Canada will take the lead on.

These regulatory changes include:

• Reduction of regulatory paperwork “to simplify and reduce requirements related to record retention, reporting and notifications and to provide more flexibility in meeting specific requirements related to matters such as antimicrobial treatment.”
• Amend regulations to “facilitate cannabis research for non-therapeutic purposes”.
• Raising the possession limit for cannabis beverages (no evidence of raising or removing the THC limit).
• Permitting the over-the-counter sale of certain cannabis-containing health products
• Amending the Cannabis Act regulations to “restrict the production, sale, advertising, packaging or labeling of inhaled cannabis extracts with certain aromas other than cannabis aroma”.

Health Canada says those changes likely won’t be ready before the end of the year.

Buying cannabis health products without a prescription is a step in the right direction. But the typical attitude of Health Canada bureaucrats is that public health and safety trumps your personal autonomy. As such, the agency will now target cannabis producers promoting terpene profiles that they have determined are not “flavors of cannabis.”

Why bother changing the cannabis law?

Why bother changing the cannabis law when the government should scrap it altogether? The whole system of liberal legalization has insulted the Western legal tradition of free markets and the rule of law.

All they had to do was get cannabis out of the penal code. We already have laws on the books that facilitate peaceful unions. Tort and criminal law provide security, while contract, property and commercial law facilitate cooperation and exchange. Politics does not have to come into play. Politicians certainly don’t need to draft new laws and create roles for their already bloated, taxpayer-funded bureaucracy.

The three biggest hurdles for small craft businesses are:

1. Entry barriers due to high bureaucracy costs
2. Arbitrary rules for some products, such as B. THC limits for edibles and capsules
3. How the LPs can tap the stock markets and starve their malnourished competitors because
4. Excise taxes ensure Canada will never have a middle class of cannabis producers.

Will an industry round table made up of big manufacturers and government bureaucrats solve these problems? Or will they only address the excise tax as even the larger producers send half of their earnings to Ottawa?

Time will tell, but LPs and bureaucrats seem to think the round table will be a panacea.

I have my doubts. If you want a glimpse of what this “cannabis industry table” will be about, check out who supports it. If you want a glimpse of what the cannabis law change will look like, take a look at everything else this government has (or hasn’t) done.

A true, small L, classic liberal cannabis market will not emerge until Justin’s liberals are no longer in power.