As Canada slowly edges toward reaching its goals set out in the Cannabis Act , one looming question remains : Hey , America , what ’ s taking so long ?”
from the EDITOR
TG Toby Gorman
It ’ s hard to believe that legal cannabis has been available in Canada for three years . What a wild ride it has been . When the Cannabis Act was implemented in 2018 , the legislation had three goals : to take drugs out of the hands of youth , protect public health , and reduce profits in the black market . Has it worked ? Mostly . According to Statistics Canada , cannabis-related crimes among youth have dropped dramatically , fears of an increase in cannabis-induced psychosis , schizophrenia , and paranoia have not materialized , and , slowly , legal cannabis is overtaking black-market cannabis sales . This is all wrapped up in $ 2.6 billion in legal cannabis sales in 2020 , a 120 percent increase over 2019 , with a similar increase expected for 2021 . Not all is perfect , however , especially on the business side of cannabis . Supply bottlenecks continue despite thousands of new retail outlets popping up ( Canadian LPs destroyed more than 450,000 kilograms of cannabis between 2018-2020 while another 6 million packages of dried cannabis , extracts , and edibles were tossed out ), taxation policy is out of touch , consumer education is lacking somewhat , retailers must compete against government outlets , and there is an imbalance in the economic benefits . To this last point , Statistics Canada notes that 84 percent of all cannabis executives are white males while 14 percent are women . Just two percent are visible minorities . Fortunately , with the main goals met to some degree , the federal government now has an opportunity to perform a statutory review of the Cannabis Act and tweak it where necessary as the nascent industry slowly matures . Nobody said starting an industry like this from scratch was going to be easy , but it certainly hasn ’ t been a disaster . After all , it took alcohol almost 15 years to level out after prohibition .
As Canada slowly edges toward reaching its goals set out in the Cannabis Act , one looming question remains : Hey , America , what ’ s taking so long ? To find out , check out Anne Schultz ’ s coverage of MJBizCon 2021 on page 72 to see how industry leaders envision cannabis in the U . S . moving forward .
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