Edibles: What You Can Expect From Canada’s Upcoming Legalization
Anyone that’s been to a grey-market, black-market or legal cannabis shop in the USA/Europe can tell you that the legal cannabis shopping experience you are getting in Canada, pales in comparison.
In stores not influenced by the fear-driven restrictions that dictate current Canadian cannabis legislation, shoppers are treated to an experience similar to a kid in a candy shop; where every imaginable treat – and several new items never dreamed of – are presented for your consideration and consumption.
There, you can focus less on the means and more on the many, munch-able ways to meal-size your plant medicines. From gummies to baked goods, to beverages and hard candy, your tastes are treated to tons of tantalizing THC alternatives.
Adults are given the education they require to make informed decisions, and those who choose to ignore warnings are treated to the same type of experience as those who drink tequila for breakfast or try to operate a forklift after downing a couple bottles of NyQuil.
The result of education over restriction is countless examples of cannabis consumption by adults leading to more good times than bad, and an industry that flourishes in its attempts to generate tax revenue and reduce crime.
Is that what we can look forward to in Canada, come 2020, when extracts and edibles arrive on the legal scene? Not likely.
To put a finer point on it – absolutely not.
As with the rollout of dry flower and oil legalization in October of 2018, there appears to be a huge gap between what the majority of cannabis users want, and what the government is willing to offer.
Aside from the packaging and marketing laws that put cannabis in a category more restrictive than cigarettes and tobacco (two products with literally no health benefits, recognized for killing millions of people) it appears that they will be limiting edibles to 10 mg of THC per packaged edible.
And while I certainly support the start low and go slow approach to anything new, I am very strongly against the “force me to eat that which I don’t need, to get what I want” approach to babysitting adult consumption of plant medicines.
For most of us who are looking forward to edibles, whose systems require doses closer to 100+mgs of THC to get the effects we seek, these limits mean we will need to consume bags of candy and boxes of brownies to get the edible THC we want.
Just for some comparisons here: The average chocolate bar/brownie contains between 35,000 – 48,000 mg of sugar. Candy isn’t any better. To get the 100mgs of THC I need in an edible, I would be required to consume close to between 300 – 500 grams of sugar.
The recommended adult daily intake of sugar? 37.5 grams.
Quick Question: What’s killing more people these days? Cannabis overdoses or diabetes?
And while I realize that nobody is pointing a gun to my head and demanding that this is how I intake my cannabis, and that I live in a country that provides legal ways to achieve the dosage I want without the need to eat it in candy, the point is that if we are going to make edibles legal for adults, why not treat the consumers like adults?
- Replace restrictions with education: In a world where your iPhone comes with a “Do Not Eat” warning label and Nytol Sleeping Pills warn that they “May Cause Drowsiness” I think it’s better to educate those who don’t know what they are doing, than it is to punish those of us who do.
- Stop the hypocrisy: We live in a world where people die from alcohol, tobacco, opiates and sugar in the millions, and yet the restrictions on these items are, at the very least, reasonable. Instead of restricting the consumption of a plant that could, at worst, cause temporary discomfort under the guise of responsible practice, let’s pull back on some of the products with the potential to kill literally anyone that uses them.
The stigma of cannabis and its consumers is still very much alive within the legal cannabis industry, as we continue to see fear and dogma dictate that which should be determined via research and logic. And if this industry truly wants to achieve its two primary goals of eliminating the black market and generating impressive tax revenue, then those dictating the laws of the industry need to do a much better job of understanding and catering to the needs of its consumers.
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