Arrested for CBD Trafficking

A joint task force of police forces investigating illicit CBD from Owen Sound, Saugeen Shores, and Hanover Ontario announced they had used Cannabis Act search warrants to raid three sites, charging four with selling unlicensed CBD products. Charges include “unlawfully selling cannabis, unlawfully possessing cannabis for the purpose of selling it, unlawfully possessing cannabis for the purpose of distributing it and possessing property obtained by crime under $5,000.”
Owen Sound Sun Times

Quick Hits

  1. The number of seeded-acres of hemp across Canada roughly tripled, driven by CBD trends, but lacking a benchmark hemp price, producers are forced to barter.
    Globe and Mail—Paywall
  2. Half of LPs have entered the US hemp market.
    Motley Fool
  3. Health Canada announced it has adopted “a public health approach to the legalization and strict regulation of cannabis” and announced $15.2M funding for 13 organizations across Canada doing public health-and-safety education about cannabis.
    NewsWire
 

A Fraction of BC’s Illicit Growers Entering Market Could Mean Billions

If even 15% of BC’s illicit growers join the legal market, it would mean $3B in legal REC sales, according to a report from Grow Tech Labs. However , Grow Tech CEO Barinder Rasode argued the cost for craft growers to go legit is too great while production caps are too low.

  • According to Grow Tech’s numbers, doubling micro-cultivation production caps would employ hundreds and generate $700M in tax revenue.
  • Lawyer Trina Fraser noted the responsibility for lifting the burden on craft producers isn’t just Health Canada’s, but also falls to the provinces to allow farm-gate sales, and to municipalities to stop passing bylaws that hobble cannabis production.

Quick Hits

  1. Health Canada reported cannabis sales increased by 16% in the month of April, with combined flower and oil sales up 10%. The biggest growth was in MED dry flower (25%) and REC oil (20%).
    CTV News, Globe and Mail
  2. A Leafly survey found roughly 6M Canadians plan to celebrate Canada Day on Monday with some cannabis. Who will be the first to retire their Molson Canadian Rocks hat for Broken Coast or Tantalus swag?
    Twitter—Jo Vos, GrowthOp, Calgary Sun
  3. Quebec’s dépanneurs (corner stores) and grocery stores are lobbying the provincial government to allow them to sell edibles and cannabis beverages. They note they’re already trusted with selling alcohol, tobacco, and lottery tickets.
    Journal de Montréal—In French
 

RavenQuest CEO v Twitter Growers

RavenQuest BioMed CEO George Robinson courted controversy when he boasted on Twitter that after harvest, his company was yielding “55 grams per plant. Every RQB is exceeding our expectations.” He enclosed a photo of harvested bud, and growers were quick to comment it looked harvested too early and that 55 grams per plant was not an impressive yield.

Quick Hits

  1. The Global Cannabis Partnership formally launched during the World Cannabis Congress in St John, NB last week. The body was established in order to set “social responsibility” standards for the sector.
    Financial Post, Cannabis Now
  2. Alberta, leading the country with 136 REC retailers, is celebrating its clear lack of supply shortage by speeding its licensing process up from 5 to 10 new stores per week. Albertan head shops worry they’re going to be put out of business by an ever-growing number of stores that sell everything they do—plus the cannabis to consume with it.
    Globe and Mail—Paywall, The Star
  3. Customers lined up for the opening of Fort McMurray, AB’s first REC store, which served 400 in two hours in the 66,600-person mining community.
    CBC Edmonton, GrowthOp

Canopy Heads Outdoors after Warning Senate Against It

Canopy received a Health Canada license to grow outdoors and began planting in a 160-acre site in Saskatchewan—despite a longstanding opposition by the company and its CEO Bruce Linton to outdoor cultivation. In May of last year, Linton joined Allan Rewak of the Cannabis Council of Canada in asking the Senate to ban outdoor cultivation. Linton said then growing outdoors “may have a future sometime, but I don’t think it’s today.”
Bloomberg, iPolitics

In May of last year, Linton joined Allan Rewak of the Cannabis Council of Canada in asking the Senate to ban outdoor cultivation. Linton said then, growing outdoors “may have a future sometime, but I don’t think it’s today.”
Bloomberg, iPolitics

  • Following news they had received an outdoor license from Health Canada, Linton told Bloomberg, “We’ll take a licence for anything we can get, but we’re cautious enough to call it a pilot because there’s a possibility these things don’t work out as much as some people would like. We’re not sure this is going to be a long-term business for us but we need to try everything.”
  • The move may potentially allow Canopy to produce lower quality bud for extraction, leaving its indoor product for the dry-flower market—though Linton himself expressed doubts about how easy it is to grow outdoors: “I suspect a lot of people are going to find out in the next three to four months it’s not a straightforward process to grow quality cannabis in Canada in an outdoor environment.”
  • After absorbing 12 companies in a year, Canopy is finished buying smaller producers, and is focused on developing beverages. The company will also begin producing infused chocolates at their Smith Falls headquarters (the former Smiths Falls Hershey Chocolate factory that I and many other children in the Ottawa area visited on field trips in the 1980s). Financial Post, Ottawa Business Journal
  • The Globe‘s Jameson Berkow noted Linton told him explicitly that regardless of federal legalization in the US, passage of the STATES Act (recognizing and protecting state legalization) would trigger the closure of the $3.4B Acreage deal.
    Twitter
  • A number of Canopy insiders sold stock.
    Twitter—WeedStreet 420

Quick Hits

  1. At the Cannabis Europa conference, Aurora CCO Cam Battley called on UK doctors to hurry up and start prescribing MED. “What was the point of creating a medical cannabis system if patients can’t access it?” he asked.
    The Guardian
  2. Tilray made its first shipment of MED to the UK.
    Yahoo Finance
  3. Lift offered advice for new MED users getting used to the medical system. Lift also produced a very handy infographic to help break down the final regulations on new cannabis products, plus comparisons for all with dried flower.
    Lift
 

There’s No Child Cannabis Crisis

The Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program said between September and December of last year, there were 16 cases of “serious adverse events” in children and teenagers caused by REC. All cases required critical care, though the data was split between 10 children who accidentally consumed cannabis-infused products, and six cases of “intentional exposure” in which teenagers consuming cannabis had too much. Globe and Mail, CBC Health

“While the numbers may be higher, to understand if we are now seeing an elevated risk of poisonings post-legalization this needs to be calculated as a population-level risk, not just ‘there are more than there were before,'” Haines-Saah argued. “For example, in Colorado there were reports that peds poisonings ‘increased 5 fold’ post-legalization. Yet this was an increase of 38 cases over 6 years FOR THE ENTIRE STATE. Again, a significant number, but is this meaningful at the population level? Or for health services?” Twitter

  • Epidemiology scholar Stephanie Lake noted it is “important to remember this represents a change from 0.008% –> 0.026% of ALL hospital visits in that age group. Something to look for? Yes. [Public] health crisis? No.”
    Twitter
  • One of the study’s lead investigators, Dr. Richard Bélanger, said “This is a small number.”
    The Leaf
  • The main causes of pediatric poisonings, Haines-Saah stressed, are laundry pods, wiper fluid, and OTC medication. The Globe‘s André Picard referred to a study in Clinical Pediatrics that found children visit the ER after consuming cosmetics every two hours in the United States.
    Twitter, Clinical Pediatrics

Quick Hits

  1. The demographic group increasing cannabis use more than anyone else is middle-aged men, followed by middle-aged women.
    Global News
  2. Federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said if his party wins power in October, they will not recriminalize cannabis, and “we do support the idea of people having [cannabis possession] records pardoned.”
    CTV News
  3. Fat-activist and women-in-weed advocate Amanda Scriver challenged the “judgmental, all-or-nothing” attitude many cannabis enthusiasts express toward those who use prescription medication.
    Healthline

Ontario REC Sales Double, Complaints Lodged

Ontario saw sales double in the first month of REC retail. Even with only 22 REC stores in the province, it’s seems clear the public wants to buy legal REC in physical stores rather than online.
MJ Biz Daily

  • April REC sales totalled $19.6M, compared with $7.6M in March and $7.5M in February.
  • April sales made Ontario Canada’s number one spender on REC, though Albertans still buy more cannabis by volume.
    Global News
  • The Ontario Cannabis Store lifted its weekly cap on purchasing nine products for which they have “enough inventory.”
    Globe and Mail
  • The products in question have low THC and CBD, while high-THC cultivars are most popular.
  • Twitter commentators interpreted the move as a prelude to the OCS getting rid of products that aren’t selling and won’t get ordered again. “Could literally happen to hundreds of SKUs once license bottleneck eases and we have way too many LPs pumping out product,” lawyer Matt Maurer said.
  • Cannalyst “GoBlueCdn” imagined the OCS will “1. Slap a low price online and undercut their new retailers 2. Return product to LPs for a credit. 3. Wait it out and sell stale inventory slowly.”

The OCS, according to the Ontario Ombudsman, is “the single most complained-about government organization of the fiscal year ending March 31.”

Quick Hits

  1. The Cowichan Tribes, the Vancouver Island Coast Salish community that is the largest First Nation in British Columbia, accused the province of a conflict of interest over cannabis retail. The provincial government, which has delayed their REC retail licenses for six months, is also competing with the Cowichan Tribes for shopping-mall real-estate In Victoria, where they wish to open a BC Cannabis store. BC’s cannabis minister signalled the government is willing to stand down.
    Vancouver Sun
  2. BC’s first Indigenous-owned REC retailer, Kure Cannabis Society, opened on National Indigenous Peoples Day in the Skwah First Nation, near Chilliwack.
    The Tyee
  3. Okanagan, home of BC Bud (according to some, mainly Okanagans), finally got its first REC retailer, eight months in.
    National Post

Advice for Flailing Ontario

Blackshire Capital executive VP Jean Lépine assessed the Ontario Cannabis Store as overrun with logistical problems and failing to generate as much tax revenue as it could.
The Growth Op

  • He noted Ontario continued to complain of a supply shortage when supplies were becoming available.
  • The Ontario Cannabis Store, he argued, carries too many products consumers don’t want, while when LPs short the OCS on inventory, they’re protected by no-penalty contracts.
  • He counseled abandoning lotteries in favour of pre-qualification for new licenses.
  • Abstractly, Lépine called for Ontario to work with new applicants to imagine “what’s possible rather than what currently is” at a daylong summit attended by provincial and Health Canada reps, and Deloitte.
    GrowthOp

Quick Hit

  1. Shoppers Drug Mart signed a deal with TruTrace Technologies to develop a pilot program tracking cannabis from seed to sale and measuring quality, all with blockchain. Some, however, question the ability to track a product as variable as cannabis.
    Global News

Health Canada Begins Consultations on CBD Health Products

During Health Canada’s media call on new cannabis regulations last week, one reporter asked whether there was any possibility CBD might receive Natural Health Product (NHP) designation, making it possible for retailers outside the licensed cannabis sector to sell it. Health Canada officials said they would eventually be moving toward public consultations on the issue, but few expected such consultations would happen soon. To the suprise of many, they were announced this week. (They’re open to online comment until September 3.)

Quick Hits

  1. Here’s a quick list of things any Canadian can demand from their MP in support of MED patients, courtesy of lawyer and MED-rights advocate Trina Fraser.
    Twitter
  2. A survey found 45% of employers want to see MED covered by health benefits plans.
    Bontaniq

Kanehsatake Outpaces Quebec in Dispensaries

There are more dispensaries in Kanehsatake Mohawk Territory (pop. 1,350), 30 minutes northwest of Montreal, than there are legal SQDC REC stores in Quebec.
TVA Nouvelles—In French

  • Chief Serge Simon said this was a situation the federal government created, forcing Band Councils like his to attempt to regulate a product Ottawa sprang on Indigenous communities.
  • Chief Simon said his community wants, as others have, to run public consultations on cannabis, hold a referendum, then set up independent oversight for cannabis within their own territory. Ottawa legalized cannabis without proper consultation with First Nations, Simon argued, and the result of that is many First Nations did not have time to catch up.
  • I wrote about the differences between the handling of cannabis in Kanehsatake and in neighbouring community Kahnawake Mohawk Territory (southwest of Montreal, with no dispensaries) last winter.

Quick Hits

  1. A Montreal MED user successfully beat an attempt by his landlord to ban him from consuming cannabis indoors by refusing to accept the modification to his lease and appealing on the grounds of medical necessity.
    Journal de Montréal—In French
  2. A second branch of the SQDC—this one located in rural Mirabel, north of Montreal—adopted a strike mandate.
    Montreal Gazette
 

First Moves toward Vaping Devices

Organigram will offer its products as part of Feather Company vapes this fall, making it likely the first LP to announce its vape-product plans. The Organigram/Feather vapes will come in three different systems: closed-system vapes (such as pod systems), disposable vape pens, and 510-thread compatible cartridges like those popular on the illicit market.
New Cannabis Ventures, Twitter—David-George Cosh

Quick Hits

  1. Italy announced plans to import 400 kilograms of MED over two years and called for tenders. Aurora won the last such call.
  2. Aurora’s Cam Battley expects much of his company’s product will be for export to Europe. Other LPs are equally enthusiastic about the prospect of dominating international cannabis, but they’ll face bans on REC exporting/importing, UN uneasiness, and critics claiming their optimism is unfounded.
    GrowthOp