When Canopy Growth opened its first cannabis factory in an old chocolate plant near Ottawa four years ago, it did so predicting a bright future. Canada had already legalized medical marijuana, and Canopy predicted full legalization for recreational use to be next.<\/p>\n
What the company hadn\u2019t predicted, however, was the sudden flood of foreign visitors. Politicians and police authorities from Jamaica, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece and Australia have all come knocking, as well as doctors from New Zealand, Brazil and Chile, along with groups of corporate investors and bankers \u2013 so many that Canopy now sometimes splits up the groups according to their birthdays.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we\u2019d have to give a lot of tours, so we just cut a window into the wall,\u201d said the company spokesman, Jordan Sinclair. \u201cWe put windows in all of the doors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canada will be thrust even more directly under the international microscope on Thursday, when a vote in the Senate is expected to ratify Bill C-45, effectively making Canada the first G20 nation to legalize recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a bit of a science fiction experience for a while,\u201d said Benedikt Fischer, an expert on substance use at Toronto\u2019s biggest psychiatric hospital. \u201cIt\u2019s unique in the world, because it\u2019s happening for the first time in a wealthy country. It\u2019s not like in the US, where there are these state experiments. Most people kind of ignore Uruguay. And so the world is really looking at this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Governments, researchers and business leaders around the world all have their own reasons for keeping tabs. Legalization could affect Canada\u2019s crime patterns, health and countless other factors \u2013 but exactly how, no one yet knows.<\/p>\n
Each Canadian province plans to roll out its newly legalized market in a slightly different way, creating about a dozen mini-laboratories within one massive test case.<\/p>\n
Even places that have already taken the legalization plunge are hoping Canada will solve some mysteries. After Colorado legalized marijuana five years ago, for example, organized crime reacted by ramping up supplies of \u201cblack tar heroin, opiates and harder drugs\u201d, said Dr Larry Wolk, the state\u2019s top public health official.<\/p>\n
But Wolk says he is interested to watch that process unfold on a bigger scale in Canada, where the new law is expected to deal a much more significant blow to the black market. Any new mix of illicit drugs in the country could have new effects on public health.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the impact of marijuana legalization on the opioid crisis?\u201d he asked as an example. \u201cDoes it actually act as a substitute so that people can get off opiates for chronic pain? Is there a positive impact? Or is it a negative impact, because as a result there\u2019s more opiates in the black market? Is [pot] a gateway? We don\u2019t really have an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
One delicate balance for Canadian authorities has been guessing at what kind of pricing will be low enough to eradicate illicit sales \u2013 yet not so low as to entice new users. Canada\u2019s finance minister, Bill Morneau, recently said the goal is \u201ckeeping cannabis out of the hands of kids and out of the black market. That means keeping the taxes low so we can actually get rid of the criminals in the system\u201d.<\/p>\n
One sign of success will be if Canada not only discourages underground sales, but converts illicit sellers to the new system, said Tim Boekhout van Solinge, a Dutch criminologist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I am mainly following \u2026 is who will be the new legal growers, and whether authorities manage to get some of the illegal growers to become legal growers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Each country around the world that has debated whether to relax cannabis laws has had its own priority in mind: from generating revenue to discouraging drug cartels. In Canada, the emphasis has been largely on public health. Cannabis will be sold in fairly plain packaging, and usually through government-run boards that already control liquor sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t be like buying Budweiser or branded alcoholic products,\u201d said Steve Rolles of Transform, a UK drug policy thinktank. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be more like buying pharmaceuticals from a chemist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s hard to know whether Canada, or any similar western country, will be able to stick to that public-health focus, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have concerns \u2026 that the lessons from alcohol and tobacco wouldn\u2019t be learned, and we might see overcommercialized markets in which profit-making entities would seek to encourage more use and could encourage risky consumption behaviours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So far, Canada has allowed a few major players to dominate the industry, and their influence remains to be seen, said US marijuana industry expert Mark Kleiman.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to build up big vested interests that then resist any change,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you have commercial industry in cannabis, they\u2019re going to end up writing the laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
For epidemiologists, Canada will provide the best-ever data sets on cannabis use.<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s health results have been encouraging, said Wolk. But overall, researchers lack solid data about cannabis use. Some key questions include addiction levels, how cannabis affects mental health, and effects on young people, said Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, often called the \u201cgrandfather\u201d of cannabis research.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout 10% of the users may be addicted \u2013 less than alcohol or tobacco,\u201d he said. \u201cSome users, who are already prone to schizophrenia, may get the disease earlier.\u201d He said he is also keeping an eye on whether heavy use by young people may affect their central nervous system.<\/p>\n
Another current Canadian health debate is how many people will be light, casual cannabis users, and how many will be heavy users.<\/p>\n
The government still must decide how to approach products that are \u201cvery potent\u201d in THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, said Mark Ware, a drug researcher and pain specialist who helped lead Canada\u2019s federal taskforce advising the new legislation. Black-market sellers have produced increasingly strong concentrates, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose have not been the subject of studies up until recently, so the question of whether to regulate those, allow them in whatever context, and then be able to study their impacts on health, that would be very important,\u201d he said. But \u201conce they\u2019re out there, it\u2019s very hard to put them back in the box again\u201d.<\/p>\n
Canadian police, meanwhile, will grapple with how to crack down on cannabis-impaired driving. That\u2019s already a struggle around the world, regardless of marijuana\u2019s legality, said Rolles. But it\u2019s much more difficult to measure impairment from cannabis than from alcohol, and enforcing a legal limit will prove tricky.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, many investors have already made huge profits from cannabis stocks, and a big question for them is whether the bubble bursts \u2013 or the value keeps rising.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re waiting to see if the sky\u2019s going to fall,\u201d said Sinclair of Canopy. One of about 100 Canadian legal producers of medical cannabis, the company owns a third of the medical market, began trading on the Toronto stock exchange in 2016 and last month became the only cannabis producer on the New York stock exchange.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Investors] are waiting to see if all the stigma and all the demonization of this product that\u2019s built up in 90 years of prohibition is true,\u201d Sinclair said. \u201cIt\u2019s on us to demonstrate that it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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