Buzz Kill: How Big Business Hijacked Cannabis Legalization

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What happens when profit-hungry corporations capture the cannabis legalization process? Michael DeVillaer, author of Buzz Kill The Corporatization of Cannabis, joins us for a sobering look at how legalization in Canada prioritized corporate interests over public health and social justice.

This eye-opening conversation reveals how cannabis legalization followed the same problematic playbook used by the alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries. Mike exposes the conflicts of interest that shaped Canada's cannabis regulations and the troubling double standard in enforcement—where corporate actors caught with illegal cannabis faced mere slaps on the wrist while individuals received prison sentences for minor possession.

As more jurisdictions consider cannabis legalization and legal psychedelics loom on the horizon, this conversation offers essential lessons in how we can build more effective and just drug policies that truly protect public health and promote social equity. Share this episode with someone you know who cares about these issues and join the discussion on creating better cannabis regulations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome, friends, to episode 300.
This is a very special episode.
I'm joined by Mike DeViller,author of Buzzkill the
corporatization of cannabis.
Welcome to Bite Me, the showabout edibles, where I help you
take control of your high life.
I'm your host and certifiedganger, margaret, and I love
helping cooks make safe andeffective edibles at life.
I'm your host and certifiedgonger, margaret, and I love
helping cooks make safe andeffective edibles at home.

(00:28):
I'm so glad you're here.
Hello, friends, both old andnew, welcome back to the show.
This week's episode is one thatI've been looking forward to
releasing.
Mike's book had a real impacton me and after reading it I
knew I needed to have Mike onthe show to discuss.
If you're joining Bite Me forthe first time, I'm glad you
found me For regular listeners.

(00:48):
I appreciate your support andcuriosity as we navigate these
important topics together.
I encourage you to share thisepisode with one person right
now.
Mike DeViller has spent hisentire career working in the
field of drug use problems andsolutions.
He has been a counselor,teacher, community developer,
collaborator, policy analyst,advocate and a director at the

(01:11):
Center for Addiction and MentalHealth, one of Canada's largest
mental health and addictionorganizations.
He's a faculty member at theDepartment of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Neurosciences atMcMaster University in Hamilton,
ontario.
His book Buzzkill, theCorporatization of Cannabis,
asks the question does cannabislegalization get it right?

(01:35):
When you consider that ourlong-term legal drug industry of
alcohol and tobacco cause moreillness, injury, death and cost
to the economy than all otherillegal drugs combined, it seems
an even more pressing question.
But what does this mean for theconsumer, the people like you
and me who are accessing thelegal adult use market or the

(01:58):
legacy market?
Are our children betterprotected?
Is our cannabis supply safer?
Does government regulationprevent bad actors?
How does regulation make roomfor craft cannabis or social
injustices from the harms ofprohibition?
We answer these questions andmany more in this eye-opening
conversation, relevant whetheryou're in Canada, the US or

(02:21):
beyond.
Please enjoy this conversationwith Mike DeViller, all right,
and we're live Well, live-ish.
I guess Listeners invite me.
I'm really excited to be joinedtoday by Michael DeViller.
He is the author of Buzzkill,the Corporatization of Cannabis

(02:45):
in Canada.
I mean, the book isspecifically to Canada, but you
do touch on a lot of otherthings.
We're going to get into all thecontent of this excellent book
that I think should be amust-read for anybody who's
accessing an adult use market.
And maybe you could just take asecond, mike, to introduce
yourself to the listeners ofBite Me and tell us what
inspired you to write this book.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, sure, thanks for the introduction, margaret,
and thanks for inviting me onthe show.
It's really kind of aninteresting experience.
I don't know if it wasinspiration so much as a sense
of obligation.
Most of my career has beenworking in drug policy,
specifically on the alcoholindustry, the tobacco industry,

(03:29):
the pharmaceutical industry andthe illegal trade in drugs, and
so I really having witnessed awhole career's worth of
adventures with those industriesin terms of regulatory
violations and includingcorporate crime and at times a

(03:49):
profound indifference to publichealth protection and relatively
weak government regulation andthen this new drug industry
comes along, this unprecedentedevent with cannabis legalization
.
So the question that came upthat I felt I really needed to
get into this was to ask thequestion of would cannabis get

(04:14):
it right, would it do betterthan its elder drug industry
siblings?
And I guess a major message ofthe book is that unfortunately
no, we didn't get it right, thatin fact the cannabis industry
adopted the exact same playbookas has been used by alcohol,

(04:35):
tobacco and pharma, and againenabled by permissive regulation
.
And so the book I think peopleshould know it's not primarily
about cannabis, the drug I mean.
Obviously there's content inthere about that, but it's
really about the politics andthe business of cannabis

(04:56):
legalization.
Now, I like that you knowpeople are interested in.
Well.
Why is this important?
You know well the reason it'simportant is that it's our
long-term legal recreationaldrugs, alcohol and tobacco.
They account for more illness,injury, deaths and cost to the

(05:20):
economy related to drugs thanall our illegal drugs combined.
So that raises a veryinteresting question about what
are the implications forcannabis making this historic
journey from illegal, demonizedstreet drug to this legal

(05:44):
commercial commodity.
And to even begin to answerthat question, we have to get
past what I think is kind of anoversimplistic notion that there
are safe drugs and there areunsafe drugs.
The reality is that any drugcan be used safely and any drug

(06:07):
can be used in a manner that'spotentially harmful.
It's really not so much aboutjust the intrinsic properties of
the drug, it's about us.
What are the meanings that weattach to a drug and what are
the decisions that we make inour use of that drug in terms of
when and how much and underwhat circumstances?

(06:30):
So that's the thing withcommercial legalization is that
we're now, all of a sudden,we're not just allowed to use
this drug If the commercialinterests prevail, we're
actually encouraged to use thisdrug.
And that's where productpromotion and advertising and
all that comes in, and that'salways been a big interest of

(06:51):
mine too.
The psychology of advertisingand what it does is it hijacks
the meaning that we attach toproducts.
And that's not necessarily abad thing.
For example, if you're sellingsustainable energy sources or
organically grown vegetables,that might be a good thing to

(07:14):
get people to think positivelyabout those things.
But we all know that drugs arenot ordinary commodities.
There's always some level ofrisk attached, and what we've
seen with alcohol and tobacco isthis cascade where we get an
increase in advertising, then weget an increase in use and then

(07:37):
we get an increase in theproblems related to that use.
And a very fair question thatpeople ask well, why?
I mean why would an increase inthe number of people using a
drug necessarily translate intoan increase in problems?
And the reason that happens isbecause in our society we seem

(08:01):
to have there's a certainproportion of our society who
are vulnerable to what I callappetites of pleasure, and yes,
that includes alcohol andtobacco and it includes other
drugs.
It also includes things likegambling and video games and
food and shopping and sex.

(08:21):
There's a certain percentage ofthe population who will engage
these appetites of pleasure in away that it causes them
problems.
So as use of a drug increasesamong the general population, it
also increases among thatvulnerable portion of the
population, and that's why weget this increase in problems.

(08:45):
So why would we think thatcannabis, as an appetite of
pleasure, would be any differentfrom all these other things?
Now, the last point I'm goingto make on that question, and
it's maybe the most importantone, is that none of that has
ever been, or ever will be, agood reason to criminalize

(09:05):
cannabis, and that is sort ofthe unfortunate history we have.
None of this is a good reasonto criminalize it.
It's just a good reason toexercise some sensible caution
in how we use it.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Which is sort of like the public health angle that
you talk extensively about inthe book and I know you talk
about in the book as well, liketobacco and alcohol being more
harmful than all other drugscombined.
And I think you also mentionedpharmaceuticals as well, grouped
into that category, that eventhough this is something that
could be potentially, you know,prescribed by a doctor, that's

(09:44):
also in that group, because youknow you watch TV and you see
all the ads for a lot ofpharmaceuticals that you know
can potentially improve yourlife, but then they also include
that long list of side effectsthat always come at the end of
every commercial.
And I guess maybe there'ssometimes a little bit of
pushback against the cannabisangle because, as somebody who's
been in the cannabis space forquite some time and I'm a

(10:05):
regular cannabis consumer,there's this notion that
cannabis is relatively harmlessand so anytime there's any kind
of talk about cannabis usedisorder or some of the other
things that can come along withusing cannabis heavily or on a
regular basis, there's a lot ofpushback against that notion
because it is deemed, generallyspeaking, relatively safe,

(10:28):
especially compared to a lot ofother substances that you could
take.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, you're absolutely right and I think
again it goes back to my pointthat there's always going to be
a proportion of the populationwho are going to find a way to
get into trouble with it.
And I think why cannabisenthusiasts sometimes get sort
of their backs up a bit isbecause for years that was used

(10:56):
as a reason to support keepingcannabis illegal.
It says, well, it hurts people.
Therefore, therefore, we haveto make it illegal and no that
and this is where the publichealth, I think, position is
very important.
We recognize that givingsomebody a criminal record for
what is, for the great majorityof users, a harmless activity is

(11:20):
that does a lot of publichealth harm too, so we have to
separate.
Is that does a lot of publichealth harm too, so we have to
separate.
There's this tradition you knowof there's a portion of people
who are harmful, then we have tomake it illegal for everybody
and no, that's where publichealth steps in and says no, we
have to stop criminalizing this,but we still have to try to

(11:40):
encourage people to exercisesome reasonable caution in how
they go about using it.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Right Now.
You also I mean you argued thatlegalization of cannabis was
driven more by corporateinterests than public health or
social justice.
Can you elaborate on that?
And why should we care?
Because from somebody likewe're in Canada and we've
enjoyed legal cannabis for sixyears now and yeah, why should

(12:08):
we care?

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Okay, Well, let's go back a little bit in time and
talk about social justice.
There's so many interestingstories around this.
If you look back to the early1990s, the Liberal Party of
Canada actually introducedlegislation to decriminalize

(12:28):
cannabis, and I'll just take amoment to make sure everybody
understands the difference.
I mean, legalization is what Icall the beer store model.
Right, you can go in and youcan make a purchase.
You can't do that indecriminalization.
And decriminalization, if youget caught, you might get your
product confisc.
Caught, you might get yourproduct confiscated, you might
get a small fine, but you don'tget a criminal record.

(12:49):
So the liberals actuallyintroduced legislation to do
that much in the early 1990s,but despite the fact that they
held a majority government for acontinuous decade, they never,

(13:11):
got around to actually passingthe legislation.
So you know, and what happenedis that we continue to
criminalize it.
So for all those years, sincethe 1990s, almost every year
there was an additional 20,000or more Canadians who got
criminal record for reallyharmless use of cannabis.

(13:33):
So then fast forward a fewdecades, to 2016, and the
federal NDP introduced a motionto the House of Commons to
decriminalize cannabis, not toreplace legalization, but just
to be an interim measure, whilethe government would continue to

(13:53):
take another two years to workout all the complex logistics of
legalization and actually makeit happen.
But that was defeated by blockvoting of the conservatives and
liberals.
So we still have a few moreyears of people being
criminalized that could havestopped it.

(14:14):
So then we get when theliberals form a majority
government again in 2015,.
It very promptly sets up a taskforce to look into, to study
this and make somerecommendations, and that task
force made two very clearstatements against
decriminalization as an interimmeasure.

(14:36):
Even.
And if you look at the CannabisAct, it has some pretty brutal
provisions still.
It has some pretty brutalprovisions still.
The maximum penalty forpossession of cannabis from an
illegal source is five years inprison.
Wow, five years.

(14:57):
Yeah, that's pretty heavy dutyNow.
So the good news is that sincelegalization, arrests for
possession have decreased quitesubstantially, but it hasn't all
gone away.
In 2019, if you look at thecalendar year 2019, there were

(15:18):
still 16,000 cannabis-relatedarrests made in Canada.
Now, that's way down from whatit used to be, but that's still
a lot under so-calledlegalization.
Now what became interestingalso is that while possession
charges went way down, there wasthis big increase in

(15:41):
import-export charges and youknow, some of us were saying,
say what, what's that all about?
And when you think about importand export, what do we imagine
in our heads?
We think of a truckload ofcannabis crossing the border, or
or a trunk car, a car trunkload of cannabis or at minimum
we've all seen the movies.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, like the stuff you think of in movies At
minimum a suitcase, full right.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's not what was happening.
This was people being chargedwith import-export for a small
amount of personal cannabis ontheir person as they crossed the
border, which is prettyharmless.
So you know.
My point on social justice isthat the Liberal Party never

(16:28):
seemed to be that interested incannabis law reform from a
social justice perspective.
It only got really passionateabout it when it found a way to
monetize it.
That changed everything.
So that's the social justicepicture.
I also want to address what youalso asked about the public

(16:50):
health approach, and for decadesall kinds of drug policy
organizations have been sayinglet's get rid of this criminal
justice approach and use apublic health approach, and that
was a nice kind of coolsounding meme that a lot of
people thought was good.
What they did not tell us atany point was that there was a

(17:10):
large number of liberal partyelites and their senior
bureaucrats who had alreadyinvested in cannabis production
companies for therapeuticpurposes.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
So is that more like on the medical side when you're
talking about therapeuticpurposes?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yes, that's exactly what that is.
And so all those companies thathad license for medical
production now we're going toget their licenses expanded to
include producing forrecreational use.
And, of course, all these guysin the party had positioned
themselves beautifully to makehuge returns on legalization

(17:52):
with this much expandedrecreational market, but we
never heard about that.
It took investigativejournalists to dig up all that
stuff.
So then in 2015, when theLiberals again formed a majority
government, in contrast to thelow priority it gave
decriminalization, it veryquickly established the task

(18:14):
force, and there were somereally blatant conflicts of
interest in this task force.
So the chair the person who wasappointed chair of the task
force was a senior advisor at alaw firm that had already
publicly identified itsaspiration to be the go-to

(18:37):
advisors for the cannabisindustry, and after the work of
the task force, she was seen bysome journalists at the Globe
and Mail attending cannabisindustry meetings and handing
out her business card for herlaw firm.
The co-chair had a consultingcompany and already had four

(18:58):
clients who were cannabisproduction companies, and after
the work of the task force, hewas hired to a senior position
at one of our country's mostprominent cannabis producers.
So this was not the objectivitythat we really that really
should be in place.
In fact, I thought it was.
I've been watching drug policyfor a long time and I thought it

(19:22):
was one of the most blatantconflicts of interest that I've
seen over the course of mycareer.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
And just to clarify for the listeners when you're
talking about the task force,you're talking about the group
of people that came together tosort of shape the potential, the
legalization policy that wasgoing to be rolled out, and yet
many of these same people werealso offering their services to
potential licensed producers andpeople sitting on boards of

(19:48):
licensed producers, the board ofdirectors.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
That's exactly right, margaret.
Yes, good clarification.
So what we found happened.
So with that kind of bias, andright from the very beginning we
found that the task force wasgenerally making very industry
friendly recommendations and inits final report what we saw is

(20:14):
it did make some recommendationsthat would be, you know, good
for public health, like theeducation programs, make sure
people know what risks are, andso forth, but it didn't
recommend anything that wouldencroach upon the industry's
interest in market expansion andprofits.

(20:36):
For example, you know, minimumage was a really contentious
issue and the ranges ofrecommendations that were made
were from 18 at the low end and25 got the high end, and both
the task force recommended andthe government approved the
lowest end of that range at 18,which has major implications for

(20:58):
market expansion.
Now the proviso of course weneed to talk about with that is
that it did give a proviso whereprovinces, if they so chose,
could raise the age, and most ofthe provinces, except Alberta
and Quebec, did raise the age to19.
And then, a couple of yearslater, quebec surprised

(21:21):
everybody by raising it to 21.
So that was interesting.
So just to finish, I would arguethis was not about social
justice and compassion.
This was not about publichealth protection, this was
strictly business.
Now your question about whyshould we care?
I love that question it'sbecause this is bigger than

(21:43):
cannabis cannabis and it'sbigger than our other drug
industries.
This is a problem in everysector of our economy.
Where you know, politicalpundits talk about neoliberalism
, this process of allowingregulatory capture, as they call
it, by industry, and it's justthat our regulators are having

(22:06):
this shift of doing more toprotect industry rather than
public health and safety.
And the last point I'll make onthat is that my book, I think,
is often mistaken as beinganti-cannabis, and it's not.
It's in its essence, it'santi-corporate and it's anti

(22:27):
neoliberalism, and I reallywanted to use cannabis
legalization as this verycontemporary example that we
were.
You know, we had thisopportunity to get it right and
we didn't.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Well, and you say something very salient there
that, uh, that that thegovernment, you know, has been
working more to protect industrythan working to protect the
people that they supposedlyrepresent, which I think is
really interesting.
And there are a lot of cannabisfolks that have a, you know, a
certain feeling about largecorporate cannabis.
Generally, when it comes topurchasing, if you're buying a

(23:04):
product, you know if you havethe option between buying craft
versus buying corporate, most ofthe time people I shouldn't say
most of the time I can speakfor myself anyway I would choose
craft over corporate because Ijust feel like the approach that
they take to growing that plantand putting out a product is

(23:25):
completely different for and fora lot of the reasons that
you're talking about, becauseprofit, when it comes to
corporate, anything corporate isthe end goal, it's not people,
and that becomes the real issue.
And it's so evident too when youtalk about the social justice.
Like they had the opportunityto decriminalize, and I know you
talked about in your book aswell that oftentimes decrim can
mean you can like lose yourproduct or get a ticket, but

(23:48):
there are some models out therewhere it just means nothing
happens, like you, it's justdecriminalized.
You just go about your life.
Yeah, you can't go to a storeand buy it, but you could maybe
grow a plant in your backyard oryou could get some off a friend
who does, or something likethat.
And nobody is having their lifedestroyed by having a criminal
charge for, like you said, arelatively benign plant.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, and you know you're absolutely right and a
lot of people are figuring thatout.
I haven't monitored it much inthe last couple of years, but I
know up to about two years agowe were seeing a pretty dramatic
shift in people moving awayfrom the corporate cannabis to
supporting the local craftgrowers.

(24:31):
So people are figuring this out.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Right, and because you also mentioned 16,000
arrests and these import-exportcharges.
I mean, if you get animport-export charge, that's a
federal charge.
You are in huge trouble withthat and that is definitely
going to affect you for the restof your life and that's crazy.
And this is happening 2019 thatwas like that's after
legalization, and to think thatthese things are still happening

(24:56):
, it's kind of it's kind ofoutrageous in a lot of ways.
But now the title of your book,buzz kill, suggests that
something's been lost in theprocess of legalization.
What do you think's been lostand who's been most affected?

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, I think the first casualty and I might be
speaking largely personally here, but I know there's at least a
fair number of people who thinkthis way as well the first
casualty was the ability totrust the Liberal Party in terms
of its policy on cannabislegalization.
They promised us a law-abidingindustry that would be regulated

(25:33):
to produce product that wecould trust.
What we got was adisinformation campaign that
demonized the unlicensed tradeand deified the licensed trade,
and the story we got is that theunlicensed cannabis trade was
all these dangerous organizedcrime entities, and our children

(25:58):
were buying their cannabis fromthese dangerous criminals.
And not just cannabis, but theywill sell other dangerous drugs
to our children and they willget them to do get involved in
other crimes they love.
One of their favoriteexpressions was gun runners.
Our kids were all going to beturned into gun runners.

(26:18):
I saw that so many times and youknow from a strategic point of
view so many times, and you knowfrom a strategic point of view,
it's a brilliant strategy toleverage parental protectiveness
of their children in order totraffic legalization.
To us it's earmongering.
Yes, exactly.
The problem with it is it's nottrue.

(26:40):
It's not supported by theacademic research.
What the academic researchshows is that most people who
buy cannabis aren't buying itfrom these shadowy figures and
poorly lit parking lots in thedead of night.
They're buying it from theirfriends and they're buying it
from family members and otherkinds of social contacts.

(27:01):
And even the people who wereselling cannabis illegally, the
very great majority of them werenot selling any other kinds of
drugs and the only kind of crimethat they had any involvement
in whatsoever was sellingcannabis.
That was it.
Now, yes, there were a few badactors, as there always are, and

(27:24):
often it's the bad actors thatget the media attention.
So I think there were a fewincidents that sort of supported
the government's narrative, butby and large, these were not
the dangerous people that wewere told about.
And the other thing, even thegovernment's own intel did not

(27:46):
support this organized crimenarrative.
There was a 2016 JusticeDepartment report that looked at
all the cultivation cases triedby the government and only 5%
of them had any connection toorganized crime at all.
And I went through, year afteryear after year of the annual

(28:09):
reports from the PublicProsecution Service of Canada
and Criminal IntelligenceService Canada, and they all
reported the same thing thatinvolvement of organized crime
in the drug trade was prettymuch restricted to cocaine,
fentanyl and methamphetamine,and its involvement in cannabis

(28:31):
was negligible.
So what did we get from thislegal industry?
Well, it wasn't a law-abidingone.
There's numerous incidents ofcorporate crime, even
collaboration with the illegaltrade.
It was supposed to replace,with relatively little
consequences from governmentregulators or the criminal

(28:54):
justice system.
Now, one of the big advantagesof legalization is that we have
a surveillance system in placewhere Health Canada conducts
inspections of all licensedcannabis producers in the
country, and this has beenhappening since 2015.
And since then, health Canadahas logged 3,853 regulatory

(29:22):
violations, and 1,451 of themmet the criteria for major or
critical violations.
So so much for law abiding.
So much for the Liberal PartyCredibility on this.
The second casualty is theinvestors.

(29:43):
With their unbridled passionfor cannabis, some of them
became, unfortunately, naivesitting ducks, and the early
licensees, the corporateexecutives, who were mostly a
bunch of greedy con men, nevermade really any money selling

(30:05):
cannabis.
Where they made their money wasfrom conning naive investors.
And the last tally I saw onthis was an analysis done by a
Toronto law firm which hasestimated that investors in the
cannabis industry have lost $131billion, and I want to

(30:27):
emphasize that that's a B forbillion.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Lost, gone, and it's not just their money, you know,
it's their savings, it's debt,it's lost dreams and there was
very little protection for themfrom securities regulators
protection for them fromsecurities regulators.
So, you know, these people wereleft with debt and despair as
our government regulators seemto almost go into kind of a coma

(30:53):
with this industry.
And you know, there's one ofthe expressions I've used in
lots of cases is that ourregulators are in danger of
being transformed from, you know, government watchdogs to
corporate lapdogs, and this, and, as a result, cannabis
investors got hurt in a big way.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
And it's funny you mentioned that because I know
you talked a lot in your bookabout how the people who are
running these, these corporatecannabis companies you know
they'd be closing down giantgreenhouses they just built and
laying off people and investorswere losing money, but somehow
the C-suite executives stillmade their bonuses, and that
doesn't sit right at all withanybody.

(31:37):
But you also and I'm reallyglad you also touched on the
people selling weed, on theillegal trade, because what you
talk about and what the researchsuggests is what I've seen in
my own personal life, you know,through years of being around
cannabis is that usually youwent to somebody's house and you

(31:58):
pick some up and maybe theymight sell mushrooms or
something, but they that'susually all they did.
You'd shoot the ship for alittle bit and you'd go home and
they'd be like, oh great, Ijust made 50 bucks and they
would use it on grocery money orsomething like that.
Like the the, the notion that itwas mostly organized crime does
seem incorrect.
I mean, those are the storiesthat make the news, because it's

(32:20):
not exciting to have, like youknow, bill from the house down
the street got busted with, youknow, an ounce of weed in his
cabinet or something.
It's just not.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Yeah said were really serious,but it has to do with things

(32:40):
like really shady practiceswhere they're, you know, selling
weed in the on the market thatthey were using pesticides that
weren't allowed or like thingslike that, and so that really
does put into some doubt aroundthe safety of some of the legal
weed.
I mean, you expect to have theregulatory folks have the teeth

(33:03):
necessary to sort of protect thepublic, but it doesn't seem
like that's the way things areplaying out.
I don't know if the industryhas improved since you've
written this book.
Maybe you can comment on that.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah well, it's a good question and the short
answer is no, and I've justrecently done some analysis on
that and, uh, the, the, becausewe've been at this with
companies legally producingcannabis.
We've been at it for a decadenow, since, you know, if you
conclude the, the period ofpre-recreational to include the

(33:38):
therapeutic medical, we've beenat this a good decade and
actually a bit more than adecade, and I just I don't have
the numbers at hand, but thetake-home message is the
improvement has been minimal andwe should have seen a lot more
over the period of a decade.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Well, that's disappointing to hear.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
And it was for me too .
I was really hoping to see atleast some good news that things
were improving, but it's prettysmall the amount of people.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
So, in that regard, then, what does that mean for
the consumer who's going into astore to buy cannabis if we know
that a lot of the product thatcould potentially be sold is not
necessarily safe?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, well, I know, the solution of a friend of mine
is he just grows his own in hisbackyard and he knows
everything that goes in theground.
He knows everything that happensduring the plant's growing
cycle, knows everything thathappens during the plant's
growing cycle, and I think andit's surprising that, I mean

(34:48):
maybe it's just too much of ahassle for most people that they
don't want to do it, but that'sthe safest way.
I mean, our government just hasnot.
I mean, growing cannabis on alarge scale is very difficult,
and so you have to at leastacknowledge that, and that's why
I'm, you know, inclined tosupporting lower craft growers.

(35:10):
It's just more manageable froman agricultural perspective.
So I think that's why we needto get away from these big
corporations.
We need to focus on small craftand still regulate, you know,
very tough.
I mean, there are companiesusing illegal pesticides on

(35:32):
products that are potentiallyvery dangerous, and when you
think there are people who areusing cannabis medicinally, who
are compromised in terms oftheir immune system, and we're
feeding them poisons in thiscannabis and these companies get
off with nothing but a slap onthe wrist.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
It's a real deterrent .
When I spoke to a committee ofthe Senate on this, I talked
about that and I said you know,why is this not considered the
poisoning of people seekingmedicine for cancer or
compromised immune system?
And you've got a companydeliberately feeding them poison

(36:14):
.
I said senators, why is thisnot a serious crime?

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
There was no answer.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, right, there was no answer.
Yeah, and I mean you're talking.
You're speaking my language ina lot of ways, because I know a
ton of people that grow theirown cannabis.
I'm one of them and that's alsothe reason why I like to make
my own edibles as well, becauseI know exactly what's going into
them and I have spoken to a lotof edibles makers through this
particular podcast and I likewhat they're doing, because they

(36:42):
are usually more on the craftside than the corporate side and
they put a little more thoughtand care and attention into what
they're doing than you're goingto get when it's all about how
cheaply can I produce thisproduct so I can maximize my
profit, and that's a verydifferent way of looking at
selling a product on thecannabis market.
But I mean, a lot of peoplealso believe that legalization

(37:05):
would bring a more just andequitable cannabis market, and
do you really?
Do you feel like we've achievedthat?
In any case?

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Well, it's more bad news, I'm afraid.
I don't think legalization ofcannabis in Canada was ever
about justice and equity.
I think there were a lot ofpeople who, in a sense, were
conned by a very expertlydeveloped public relations
campaign and the thinking thatthat's what this was all about.

(37:36):
But you know, those of us whohave been around the block a few
times with our other legal drugindustries, we had a pretty
strong suspicion of how this wasgoing to play out.
So I don't think it was reallycorporations derailing anything.
I think you know they just didwhat corporations do.
And I think from day onelegalization was used as a kind

(38:01):
of Ponzi scheme in a way formaking a lot of money for a very
small group of elites andeverybody else sort of got
shafted and the whole thing wasreally, I think, very much over
romanticized.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Right Now, the war on drugs disproportionately
affected marginalizedcommunities, as we well know.
Do you think legalization hashelped repair these harms, or is
it just created new inequities?

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Well, I mean, one of the ideas that I think came up
that was sort of an interestingone is that, yeah, that you know
the war on drugs did verynegatively affect these
marginalized communities andthere should be some kind of
reparations, and I certainlyagree with that in principle.
One of the ideas that reallygained prominence was that if

(38:56):
you've got people who have beenhurt by having a drug conviction
, specifically a cannabisconviction, that maybe we give
them preferred, easier access toa cannabis retail license, and
I think this was taken on veryenthusiastically.
I think it was in Oakland,california, where that became a

(39:18):
pretty major happening.
But we heard a lot of talkabout this in Canada too, and I
think you know that's okay ifthat's what the person wants.
But I, the more I thought aboutit, you know, I thought, well,
if someone was had a pot chargethey got busted 10 years ago or
even a year ago why would weassume that that is how they

(39:43):
want to have some reparation, tobe given a cannabis retail
license?
I mean, there are people,obviously, who want that, but
why would we assume that wouldmake everybody happy?
Why would you only have oneoption, that one as a form of
reparation?
I mean, maybe the person wouldreally like some help
establishing a software companyor beginning a carpentry

(40:05):
apprenticeship, or maybe theycould use some free legal
assistance or help withaffordable housing, food
security, daycare.
You know all the issues thatare so potentially and probably
so much more important to thesemarginalized communities than
getting some help with a retaillicense for cannabis.

(40:27):
So you know, right from thebeginning I was saying no, you
know we need to offer a broadrange of reparations.
But even that was stillsabotaged by big cannabis.
I don't remember some detailsnow off the top of my head, but
I think in the state of New Yorka lot of these attempts to give
cannabis retail licenses topeople, it got sabotaged by big

(40:50):
cannabis.
So, you know, and I haven't seenanything that shows that it was
a big success anywhere.
I might have missed something,but I haven't seen anything.
It's, I think, a perfectexample.
You know the intent was good,but I think the execution was
compromised by narrow thinking.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Right, and it's interesting you mentioned that
mentioned about the cannabislicenses in particular, because
in many jurisdictions in Canadathere's so many retail licenses
that it's almost impossible tomake money at the retail level
now.
So making reparations in thatway is not that not as can be
very unattractive.
Actually, even if you're acannabis lover, there's a lot of

(41:29):
different ways you could be inthe cannabis industry without
going the retail angle.
But, like you said, why are weassuming that they even want to
get into the cannabis space toearn a living, or there's lots
of different ways that it can beapproached, and so I really
like that.
But also, I mean they did Idon't know if they've changed it
, but they offered people to getthey could get pardons on their

(41:52):
past criminal convictions forcannabis, and as far as I know,
that still costs quite a bit ofmoney to do.
And why they didn't justexpunge the records, Like if
they really wanted to helppeople overcome the challenges,
then why wouldn't they justexpunge records instead of
making people have to apply fora pardon?

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yeah, I think it's a really good question.
You know and I just keep goingback that to my my one of my
main points and it's one of themain points of the book is this
was never about social justiceRight At any point.
That was part of the sell, butit wasn't really what was
motivating all this.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Right.
So it was basically corporateinterests at the expense of
social justice and the publichealth.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Right, and you know there's a story that is a
fascinating one that I'll tellthat relates to this.
There was a licensed producerin Winnipeg named Bonify, and
what happened with them is theyhad over promised their ability
to produce and therefore theirability sell, and therefore the

(43:02):
impact on stock values to theirinvestors, and they fell
terribly short of the yield theywould need to fulfill those
promises of revenue and stockvalues.
So what they decided to do wasthat they went out and bought
200 kilograms of cannabis froman illegal source and then sold

(43:26):
it to retail outlets inSaskatchewan.
Now there were some employees,and I talked to one of them on
the phone.
We had a long, absolutelyfascinating discussion about
this, about this, and so he sortof gave me a lot of the stuff
in the background that you knowHealth Canada never wrote

(43:52):
anything about.
But anyway, some employeesfearing their own, you know,
culpability I mean they wereunloading the illegal cannabis
and loading it on differenttrucks, and so they said you
know what, we're committing aserious federal crime here.
So they you know they went tomanagement and said look, you
know we're not comfortable withthis.
Management said you know what,just mind your own business and

(44:13):
do your job, let us do thethinking.
So, unhappy with that, theemployees went to the board of
directors and the Board ofDirectors, somewhat reluctantly,
said okay, yeah, we'll lookinto it.
And I think it was the guy Italked to in the phone.
He never told me, but I thinkhe's the one who decided to call

(44:33):
Health Canada.
So Health Canada came, did itsinspection, found all kinds of
regulatory violations, and inthis whole process the company
did admit, yes, we did buy someillegal cannabis from what it
called a broker, and some of theexecs were fired.

(44:57):
I think one board member wassuspended.
The company's license wassuspended for less than a year
and the company actuallyeventually went bankrupt, which
meant all these employees,including the conscientious ones
, lost their jobs.
Now, margaret, imagine that youand I pool our funds and we go

(45:18):
out and we buy 200 kilograms ofillegal cannabis and we try to
sell it and we get caught.
You and I are almost certainlygoing to prison.
We are going to prison and theCannabis Act provides for that
much cannabis.
It provides a maximum of 14years in prison.

(45:40):
Yeah, wow exactly of 14 years inprison.
Yeah, wow, exactly.
But with Bonifay, no one wentto prison, no one went to court,
no one was even charged.
That's crazy, it is.
And now, at the same time thatI was researching this Bonifay
case, I just, totally byaccident, I just stumbled upon

(46:01):
another case that was happeningin Winnipeg at the same time,
involving an Aboriginal man whohad been arrested for possession
of not 200 kilograms ofcannabis but 85 grams, and he
was also found to be inpossession of some equipment

(46:22):
that could be used in thefurther distribution of this
cannabis.
And in sentencing him, thejudge did not call him a broker.
The judge called him a drugdealer and sentenced him to 10
months in prison.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Right, and that's the language.
The language you point out isso interesting and kind of
infuriating too, because in thatfirst case, with the Bonafide
employees, if anybody was goingto end up seeing jail time it
would have been those, thoseemployees that were actually the
ones handling the cannabis andloading the trucks, unloading
the trucks, and then again thecorporate execs, the C-suite

(46:58):
people, just you know, I guesssomebody got fired, but you'll
just go find another job.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, exactly, another six figure salary job
and you can go on vacation for afew months High fives over
cocktails in the Bahamas, youknow.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's outrageous.
Now you mentioned thisIndigenous individual who was
sentenced to 10 months.
How has the Indigenouscommunity been impacted by
corporate cannabis, Because Ifind that that's sort of an
interesting area as well,because there's a lot of
dispensaries that you can go toon reserves that are sort of
outside of that.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yeah, and it's a really good question and it's
one of my main answer is goingto be I don't know.
I mean I understand it the sameas you that the.
I mean it seems like the Nativecommunity has just sort of
taken upon itself and said well,you know, you're not going to
let us into this system, sowe'll do it ourselves.
And I don't know to what extentthey've been the police have

(47:59):
sort of stood down and just letthem do it.
I have to admit I haven'tfollowed that issue very well,
so I don't know even what theNative communities think, if
they're happy to do itthemselves or would they really
like to be involved in otherways of doing it legally and,
you know, within the bounds ofthe law, I don't know.
I mean, I think it'd be a greatpodcast to invite a couple of

(48:22):
them in and get their opinions,rather than me sort of guessing
and imposing.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
It is interesting because I do know lots of people
that travel to reserves topurchase their cannabis because
they like the bud tenders thereand it probably keeps the money
in the community.
But I should see if I can findsomebody to come on the podcast
to talk about that morespecifically.
Now, along those same lines,craft cannabis producers and
small businesses struggle tocompete with these huge

(48:48):
corporations because they justdon't have the same economies of
scale.
Are there any policies that youthink that could help level out
the playing field?

Speaker 2 (48:56):
Well, I mean, I probably have a bit of a
hard-nosed attitude on this, butmy approach to it would be to
just get rid of the corporations.
You know, I think they tend toattract a lot of bad actors.
They're very difficult tomanage.
The politicians and theregulators are too easily

(49:20):
seduced into letting thecorporations get away with far
too much.
So you know, I would beinclined to focus on small craft
growers and just have itexclusively like that.
And you know, I remember therewas a CEO from one of the big
producers who was talking alittle bit about the craft
growers gaining market share andhe referred to them as ankle

(49:44):
biters, which it just capturesthe attitude.
You know the condescension soperfectly.
But you know, in Europe, I mean,there's a model of cannabis
social clubs right that are likeco-ops and you pay a membership
, they grow the cannabis, youcome and get your supply when
you want it and there's noattempt at market expansion.

(50:06):
It's not like we have to.
You know, there's this wholething of let's get everybody to
try cannabis.
People who want it come and getit.
But you know we're not going todo this big public promotion
campaign.
So you know there's that model,you know in the book I talk
about a not-for-profit crowncorporation that could have been
set up.
I think that would have beeninteresting to try and I hope

(50:34):
that somewhere in the worldsomebody does give it a try and
then you know, so really I would.
Again, it's an issue that I, onwhich I would defer to the
craft growers to get into somespecifics too.
Another great podcast, margaret.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Yeah, and you mentioned in your book you talk
quite a bit about the smallcraft growers and you reference
the CEO I guess I don't know ifthey call themselves CEOs or not
, but the head of a particularcraft grow company that
basically came out and said,yeah, we had some powdery mildew

(51:06):
or something like that on ourcrop and so we had to, like,
destroy it and we couldn't sellit.
And that kind of integrity Ithink you're more likely to see
in the smaller spaces, becausethey really care about what
they're doing, and that would bethe kind of company that I want
to buy from.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
Yeah, and the kind of company somebody would want to
buy from.
Yeah, somebody would want toinvest in as well.
I think there's that trustthere.
Yeah, I mean, it's almost,almost kind of like a religion,
you know, and and I with thepassion, and I say that as a, as
a positive thing, whereas youknow, I think with the
corporations, it's the religionis is all about money, right.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Absolutely I like and I find the social clubs pretty
interesting as well.
I mean, I've I've been togermany.
I was in germany last year justas they legalized, but they had
nothing set up yet.
The social clubs weren't really.
They weren't set up because itlegalized in april 1st and
that's when I was there.
But I do, I do find that sortof attractive as well because
there's sort of a communitycomponent around it as well and
people talk and then you canfind out about all kinds of

(52:07):
things, I guess, if you'retalking directly to the people
who are growing and stuff aswell.
So I find that to be aninteresting model.
So, in your opinion, would morelike eliminating like super
large corporations and maybesocial clubs and things like
that?
Would that be more aligned witha public health oriented
cannabis model?

Speaker 2 (52:27):
It could be.
Yeah, I mean it should be.
I mean I think you still haveto regulate it.
I mean there's still could bepeople who are going to, you
know, always push the margins abit right, even among small
craft growers.
But, generally speaking, Iwould have a lot more confidence
in the smaller craft growersthan I would in the large
corporate sectors.

(52:47):
I mean, it's really, and it'snot just about you know,
following the law and that ithas direct implications for
quality of the product, forpeople who are very passionate
about the product, and there's alot of factors involved in that
.
I mean, as I said, it's noteasy to grow cannabis in large
volumes.
It's an agricultural nightmarethat so many things can go wrong

(53:12):
and you know, this is why wesaw that these execs, you know
they were incentivized to buildthe biggest and largest
greenhouses in the world andmost of them ended up sitting
mostly empty.
And I remember seeing anastounding thing that was
reported in Marijuana BusinessDaily Between 2018 and 2020, the

(53:36):
cannabis industry in Canadadestroyed more cannabis than it
sold.
I mean, think about that.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
That's wild.
They destroyed more than theysold.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah, they destroyed more than they sold and one
company was destroying so muchcannabis that normally these
companies would outsource theincineration of it.
One company actually bought itsown incinerator to have
in-house.
That's how it was cheaper to doit that way than to outsource
the amount that they had toincinerate.
Now, the other thing that wasinteresting is that, because of

(54:12):
the way the laws were writtenand the regulations, cannabis
company legal cannabis companiescould not hire people who had a
cannabis conviction.
Now, there was a lot ofexpertise out there from the
days of the illegal growingoperations, right, people over

(54:32):
the years had learned how togrow larger crops without lots
of problems, but the companiescouldn't hire them because a lot
of them had actually beencharged at one point or another.
So that was another thing thathappened.
And the other thing that madethat, I think, had some
implications was that companies,because they misled their

(54:55):
shareholders, made thesepromises about production yields
that they couldn't keep.
You know, like the Bonafidestory, they had to start
purchasing from the illegaltrade and that could have some
implications for quality as well, because, by and large, that
stuff wasn't being tested.
And there's a very recentHealth Canada report, january of

(55:19):
this year, and what HealthCanada did is it collected 50
samples from the legal trade, 50samples from the illegal trade
and did some comparisons.
And the first thing they foundwas that on the legal cannabis,
the level of THC on the labelswas exaggerated beyond the true

(55:41):
values that showed in thetesting and, in some cases,
grossly exaggerated.
And what's happening there isthat the testing labs where the
companies send their cannabis tobe tested, they are under
pressure constantly to falsifythe results of the tests and to

(56:01):
give the grower, the producer,thc levels that the company
wants and not what the testsreflect.
And if the testing lab doesn'tcomply with this, they don't get
repeat business.
So, this is another level ofcorruption.
Now, the other thing that thisreport from Health Canada showed

(56:23):
that is also very interestingis they found in both legal and
illegal samples lots ofcontamination.
So the legal product was lesslikely to be contaminated with
mycotoxins, which is like fungus, or pesticides or microbial

(56:45):
contaminants, and also for someheavy metals, particularly
arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercuryand barium, and arsenic was
actually quite high in somesamples, that's, in the illegal.
But the legal product was morelikely to contain and exceed

(57:08):
safe limits for heavy metalssuch as copper, nickel,
molybdenum, chromium andvanadium.
So that's a problem and this isprobably an issue that a lot of
your audience probablyunderstands better possibly far
better than I do.
But plants vary in theirpotential to absorb heavy metals

(57:32):
and it turns out that cannabis,as a plant, is what's called a
hyper accumulator and that meansthat it more readily absorbs
heavy metals than many otherplants like 100 to 1000 times
more readily.
I didn't know, that Cannabis isparticularly at risk for

(57:55):
absorbing heavy metals.
So the obvious message for thehome grower is you damn well
better know where your soilcomes from and what's in it.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
Right, that's really interesting because I do know a
lot of home growers that don'tdo soil growing at all.
They use other mediums.
But that's a really interestingpoint about the
hyperaccumulation, because I wastotally unaware that that was a
thing.
With regards to the cannabisplant, I did also see, I think,
a synopsis of that Health Canadareport.
I do remember at one point oneof the licensed producers was

(58:28):
talking about dynamic versusstatic pricing in the cannabis
market, and I think that was theidea that some of the LPs would
have a product go to the marketand they would get it tested
and then they would use thatsame, that same THC percentage
on every label for the rest ofthe life of that product, versus

(58:49):
others that were testing eachbatch.
I don't know how they got arounddoing like doing the static
testing, how they were able toactually do that, but I worked
in a dispensary for a couple ofyears in 2020.
And I saw that myself.
I saw products that everysingle time we would get in a
new batch, it was always theexact same percentage and then
others always fluctuated.

(59:10):
But the problem with a lot ofthat stuff too, is that there's
still a lot of consumers outthere that equate high THC with
I don't know quality, or theyjust think it's better.
And so there is of course thepressure from the LPs to also
produce something that's, likeyou know, as high as the
percentages they can possiblyget, and so that just

(59:31):
contributes to all of what youwere just talking about.
But one thing I am curiousabout is do you know the
percentage of craft growers onthe market in Canada versus
corporate Like is there?
Do you have any idea?

Speaker 2 (59:44):
I don't know and I don't think I ever even looked
into that, right?
Oh no, sorry, can't help youwith that one.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Yeah, I was just curious.
I thought maybe you might know,but it would probably take.
I mean, there's so manycannabis companies out there now
with all their brands andsub-brands, it's hard to keep
track of everything.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
I think there's 800 licensed growers now in Canada.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Is there really?
That's huge.
Yeah, that's a lot ofcompetition.
Now.
Legal cannabis was supposed toeliminate the legacy market, as
I like to call it.
In your opinion, has thatsucceeded?
I certainly have my own opinion, but I would love to hear yours
.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, well, the last I saw was that the unlicensed
market has been reduced by about50%.
Okay, which is not bad, I guess.
I think most people imaginedthat it would be higher and
faster than that.
But you know, we have to sortof be realistic.
I mean, after a century, aftermore than a century, we still

(01:00:48):
have illegal tobacco, alcoholand pharmaceutical products.
So you know, I think it'sprobably unrealistic to think
that we'll ever completelyeliminate the black market.
And if the legal market doesn'tget its act together, that's
going to help it survive longer.
I mean, if people knew thatthey were getting a guaranteed

(01:01:09):
safer product by buying from thelegal industry, that would help
a lot.
But that's not what's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
And not only a safer product but a good quality
product, because a lot of peopledon't want to give up that
quality.
It's like anything.
I mean, you can go out and buyyour corporate beer.
You can buy a really nice craftbeer from the store now, and a
lot of people are opting for thecraft beers because they're
more interesting and it's yeah.
So I tend to agree with that.
I think some of the regulationsthey have in place, but maybe

(01:01:39):
that's also like a public healththing.
I'm not really sure.
But like with edibles, you know, they're really capped at a
pretty low percentage,especially considering that some
people's tolerances are wayoutside of that and that makes
it way too expensive to buy fromthe legal market.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
Yeah, and that that's unfortunate, because I mean
from a public, and it's a trickything from a public health
perspective, because in one way,from a public health
perspective, it's way better tobe using edibles than combustion
much safer, right.
So that's a good protection.
I think where things went awrywith the edibles was that they

(01:02:17):
started being made as candy, andso the problem that happened
and we knew this as early as2014 in Colorado that people are
taking them home and they'renot being careful and they're
leaving them out and their kidscome along don't know and they
just think it's candy and theyeat it and all of a sudden

(01:02:39):
you've got a small child inrespiratory distress and you're
taking them to the hospital inthe middle of the night, and
there was clear data that thatwas becoming a big problem in
Colorado as early as 2014.
And there's a researcher inOttawa, adam Myron, who he's

(01:03:02):
shown the exact same thing ishappening in Canada.
We've had a big increase inchild admissions to hospital and
the ER from unsupervisedconsumption of cannabis candy.
So edible is a good thing.
It's in the form of aconfection.
I think that's the reason whythey're restricted to very low

(01:03:24):
levels to prevent a reallyserious overdose in a child.
It's unfortunate that we haveto do that, but you know there's
, you know what's that old thingfrom grade school right?

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
There's always people who ruin it for the rest of us.
Yeah, that's so true, thesepeople who ruin it for the rest
of us.
Yeah, that's so true Becauseobviously I'm a parent.
My kids are older now, but Inever wanted my kids getting
into my stash.
That stuff is for me.
So you lock it up, you keep itaway, because no parent wants to
go through that of seeing theirkid and like I mean, I've
overdosed on edibles before andit is not a fun time.

(01:04:00):
I can't even imagine what it'dbe like if you're just a little
kid.
So that is unfortunate, becausethat's one of those areas where
the illicit market willprobably continue to thrive,
just because of the fact that itcan't compete with like the
legal market, can't compete withthose limited potencies of the
edibles that you find on thelegal market.

(01:04:20):
But what do you do Now?
If you could rewrite Canada'scannabis laws from scratch.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
What are the top three changes that you would
make?
Yeah, I hate that question, Notbecause it's a bad question.
It's a great question and it'sprobably one of the best
questions that could be asked.
I hate it because I don't havea great answer to it.
That's going to be reallydifficult because the industry
now has become so entrenched,just like alcohol, tobacco and

(01:04:56):
pharma.
I think now we're in a modewhere we can try to make small
adjustments to improve thingsover time.
But you know, I want to get atthe important part of your
question so let's just reframeit a bit which is you know, if
another country was where Canadawas six years ago, how would we

(01:05:18):
advise them to write their laws?
And I think Germany and Maltaare a couple of examples that
are at least thinking thatthrough carefully.
It's not entirely clear yetwhere they're going to land, but
it looks promising.
It looks like they're going todo a lot better than Canada did
and a lot better than whathappened in the US at the state

(01:05:39):
level.
So this would be my advice theUS at the state level.
So this would be my adviceFirst of all, use a hybrid model
that involves decriminalizationfirst, like immediately, If you
haven't already done that, doit yesterday and then work on
non-commercial legalization.

(01:05:59):
So no corporations, just smalllocal craft growers and
nonprofits with no marketexpansion activities.
And I would then say, makeproduct quality a priority, with
meaningful penalties fordeliberate or reckless

(01:06:20):
regulatory violations.
Now, that doesn't mean that ifsomething kind of unavoidable
happens in your production thatyou know, you throw the book at
them.
But I mean, for companies thatare repeatedly reckless, A
flagrant yeah.
Yeah, there should be verymeaningful penalties for that,
quite possibly includingforfeiture of the license, and

(01:06:42):
we've had a few of those inCanada.
I think there's four licensesthat have been forfeited to date
, but it could have been a lotlarger and in my opinion, it
should have been a lot larger.
The other thing I would do andthis is probably a controversial
one for some people, but I'd bewilling to give it a chance is

(01:07:05):
to look into bringing theunlicensed producers into the
legal system.
Give them the opportunity tocome in, because they bring a
lot of expertise.
Now there's some understandingsthat have to be in place.
It's not like the Wild Westanymore.

(01:07:25):
There are laws and there areregulations and you're expected
to follow them, and if you don't, you're going to lose that
license very quickly.
So, but you know, given thoseprovisos, I would be willing to
give that a try.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
And the final thing I guess is just, the whole thing
would be under public healthcontrol.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
I think you know, forget about putting business
people in charge of this.
If you need financial expertise, but hire that expertise as
employees, Don't put those folksin charge, right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
Those are all excellent suggestions, actually,
and even the last one where yousuggest might be a little
controversial.
I mean, the listeners of BiteMe.
Like I said, there's a lot ofgrowers out there that are
listening, and there are manypeople who would probably love
to have the chance to enter thelegal market or be able to do it
legally, and they it's just notpossible right now.
It's just so expensive to getinto that whole business yeah,

(01:08:30):
right, and you know I remember.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Another uh story is, I think it was the year previous
to legalization I was invitedto sit on a panel in a meeting
organized by the magazine theEconomist.
They put together a session oncannabis legalization.
It was held in Toronto.
So here I am I'm part of thispanel, up on a stage in front of

(01:08:54):
this enormous ballroom ofseveral hundred people, I think,
most of whom were there tofigure out how they could get
into the investment in thecannabis industry.
And this is, you know, a yearbefore legalization.
And I was warning them aboutall this stuff, you know, and
they looked at me like I was askunk at a picnic, through these

(01:09:19):
just looks of outright alarm.
As I talked about all this, andafter the whole thing, one of
the other panelists came up tome who at that time was a CEO of
one of Canada's major cannabisgrowers, and he came up to me
and he said you know, mybackground is in the

(01:09:40):
pharmaceutical industry andeverything you're saying about
the pharmaceutical industry isright, you got that right, but
we're going to be better doingit in cannabis.
And I think it was about twoyears after that.
His company was in big troubleand he was fired.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Well, so much for doing things differently, I
guess, but the leopard can'tchange its spots.
Now, I guess the one question Iwould have to sort of wrap
things up is where does thisleave consumers, Like as someone
who consumes cannabis?
Yes, I make my own edibles, Ido a little growing too, but I
do like to visit my dispensaryand pick up some things from

(01:10:21):
time to time, and it's nice tobe able to have that luxury, I
guess because there's a lot ofpeople that don't.
But for someone who's goinginto a dispensary, what, what,
where does that leave us?

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
Yeah, it's.
It's a good question and it's atricky one.
There's there's not an easyanswer, but the only thing I can
suggest really is know yourgrowers know where your cannabis
is coming from.
Now, these surveillance systemsthat Health Canada has in place

(01:10:52):
, they publish it all on theirwebsite.
All the information is there soyou can go on and you can see
which companies are gettingmultiple infractions for
problems with their product, andso you can see it.
And then there's a recallsdatabase that Health Canada

(01:11:16):
maintains for all consumerproducts, and they started
adding cannabis, I think, in2014.
So, you know, I went throughall that recently and, as of
December 31st, there were 101recalls.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
December 31st of what year?

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Oh sorry, of 2024.
That's still a lot.
Yeah, 101 recalls, and some ofthem are enormous recalls too.
So you know.
But again, at least in thosecases they name the companies so
you can see who the repeatoffenders are and you can also,
if you have a particular growerin mind, you can see that.

(01:11:56):
You know, hey, great they're.
They haven't been cited,they're great.
Now, what I think would be areally valuable guide for
somebody to produce it won't beme, but I think it would be
really useful for cannabisconsumers is to sort of put out
an annual report where it sortof rates all the growers from

(01:12:17):
zero infractions to 45infractions.
Right, I mean, if somebodycould put out an annual report
like that, people might bewilling to pay money for that
information.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
No, those are good suggestions and that information
you can get from Health Canada.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
All the stuff you were talking about, because in
Canada growers are, like thelicensed producers, required to
have certificates of analysis.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Yes, they analysis.
Yes, they are yes, and that'swhat often gets them into
trouble is they have a productin-house that does not have a
certificate of analysis, whichalmost certainly means it came
from the black market.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Right, okay, so do your research.
essentially, and if you'relooking for a specific grower
that you like in in yourfavorite store, then you can
always look them up and ensurethat they don't have any
infractions held against them.
You can buy with confidence.
Okay, well, that's somethingpositive.
At least we can take away fromthat.
Yeah, now just to wrap up, mike, because I had so many other,

(01:13:18):
so many more questions prepared,but we just didn't ran out of
time and there is so much inthis book.
It's fantastic and I recommendanybody who's interested in this
topic to dig into it, becausethere's a lot more in this book
than we were even able to touchon today.
But what is one thing that youhope listeners take away from
this interview, from your book?

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Right.
Well, I guess the main thing isa point I wanted to make is
there's nothing unique or newabout cannabis legalization.
It's not our first legalrecreational drug industry and
it won't be our last.
We know there's legalpsychedelics in motion that's
coming, and I would also suggestthat over the next decade we

(01:14:03):
are going to see anunprecedented amount of
international drug policy reform, and the question is this what
is going to drive it?
Will it be public healthprotection and social justice,
or is it going to be morepermissively regulated
commercialization?
So hopefully we can learn fromcannabis legalization to do

(01:14:25):
better in the legalizationcampaigns that are yet to come.
And Buzzkill, I wrote it thatit has those lessons and I just
hope that every country that'sin the process of legalizing
will take the time to read it,because they'll find it
enormously helpful.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
That's fantastic.
Thank you so much, Mike.
I really appreciate your timetoday.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
My pleasure, Margaret .
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Friends, I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
There was a lot to digest inthat episode, so you'll find the
link to Mike's book anddetailed show notes at
bitemepodcastcom and on yourpodcast app.
And now I ask you what was yourbiggest takeaway from today's
episode?
I would love to hear yourthoughts.
You can share them with me orjoin the Bite Me Cannabis Club

(01:15:11):
to dive deeper.
And until next time, my friends, stay high.