
Cannabis is legal in Canada: What you need to know - john37386
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marijuana-faq-legalization-need-to-know-1.4862207
======
beloch
How Canada interfaces with the rest of the world promises to be a bit screwy.

For just one example, consider airline staff. Some Canadian airlines have
already banned employees from using pot. Obviously, the general public doesn't
want to fly with pilots that are high in more than one way. These airlines
also have to operate in countries, like the U.S., where their employees could
be detained or expelled for even admitting to have used pot in the past. Being
able to look foreign gatekeepers in the face and deny having ever used a
product that's legal in your native country is now a necessary job requirement
for some.

On the bright side, we could _finally_ get some quality data on the health
impacts of pot, now that trials and surveys can be done without potentially
incriminating anyone. Like practically every other fun thing in existence it's
probably very bad for you. We just don't know how... yet.

Canada taxes alcohol at a rate of over 50% in most provinces. The initial tax
rates for pot will be much lower, but should increase steadily year-over-year.
Alcohol taxes continue to rise every year. This is going to be a huge cash cow
for the Canadian government, and I can't imagine other countries not wanting
to get in on the action once they see how much Canada will be raking in.

~~~
shittyadmin
> The initial tax rates for pot will be much lower, but should increase
> steadily year-over-year. Alcohol taxes continue to rise every year.

The problem is they've got to play this game very carefully right now as the
black market is still well established and providing to many people.

They need to both drop prices (which should happen once more supply spins up)
and start raiding illegal dispensaries and mail order shops if they want to
convince people to stay in the legal system. From what I've seen on reddit -
we need to see a significant price drop and potentially quality improvement
before many existing regular users will be convinced to switch.

~~~
wafflesraccoon
Personal anecdote, I was a heavy cannabis user in Colorado when it became
legal. In the beginning most people still would purchase green from their
dealer to avoid the the high tax. Over time, most people simply switched to
using dispensaries for the convenience and selection. I no longer live in CO
but of my cannabis friends there, almost everyone I know uses a dispensary
now.

~~~
pilom
Are you and your cannabis using friends white? Colorado actually tracks these
numbers and has found for years since legalization that about 50% of "street"
level sales are illegal and 50% go through dispensaries. Minorities are
significantly more likely to purchase it illegally and whites are
significantly more likely to purchase it legally.

~~~
wafflesraccoon
Yep. CO in general is a very white state so I wonder how relevant that is? It
is interesting regardless.

------
grecy
Wow, some really interesting edge cases in there that require serious thought.

US border guards might deny you entry if you admit to previous cannabis use -
for them "A confession is as good as a conviction". So you can do something
that is perfectly legal in Canada, then a month later be denied entry to the
US for doing it.

If you work at a 100% legal Government-run Cannabis store and want to go to
the US for a holiday, you "Could be found admissible". _could_!

When arriving by air into Canada you will be asked about previous Cannabis
use. What? They don't ask about previous alcohol use, why do they for what is
now perfectly legal Cannabis?

~~~
Theodores
I have been sent to the back of the queue to tick boxes on forms correctly by
U.S. customs/border jobsworths and wondered why the experience has to be so
patronisingly humiliating.

Once on a connecting flight so I wasn't even wanting to leave the airport. At
the time I was working for a highly regarded company and going on to do some
work for CBC in Toronto. I had flown in on business class and my smile, polite
British English, white skin, smart clothes, clean passport and squeaky clean
criminal record should have given me a free pass. I wasn't even carrying any
highly unusual electronic hardware. And no I had not been a member of the
'communist party'.

As I saw it there was just a problem of 'customer service'. The mentality of
border guards should be to welcome guests to the country and not treat
everyone as a criminal.

As a non-U.S. person I am like a lot of people that just see the U.S. as not
the place to want to go to. I know that most Americans lay on fantastic
hospitality for visitors, welcoming you into their homes and looking out for
you. But the hostile border guards obfuscate that.

Canada is the far more preferable destination, whether you want to be stoned
all day or not matters little really, the legalisation of weed sends a signal
that Canada is the much more welcoming place to go.

Tourism matters, I do wonder how much tourist trade the U.S. misses out on due
to the negative perception the world has of the place.

~~~
706f6f70
> why the experience has to be so patronisingly humiliating.

It's intended to be stressful because that gets people to crack. My advice is
to not take it personally unless they really push the line. The stress is part
of their procedure to make sure you are not lying.

~~~
Theodores
Well, on that journey I had tickets for the connecting flight which was
already boarding and the flight back, not to mention a paid for room in a posh
hotel (in Canada) and plenty of accompanying documents from the main Canadian
broadcaster. None of these documents were chewed by the dog and a sensible
human being could use common sense to see that everything was legit.

However, for someone with a gun on their belt, having got their education from
Hollywood films and with a government that snitches on the world to lock up
dark skinned people in Guantanamo I guess this jobsworth mentality makes sense
to them.

Upsetting people who have good money to spend means they don't come back. You
don't want to be treated like garbage by imbeciles that insult your
intelligence. It is taken personally. The U.S.A. is not that special, it is
just full of entitled people that think they are special.

~~~
grkvlt
If your worst border crossing experience ever is being sent to the back of a
queue to fill in a form again, then i suspect you have no idea of what an
actual _bad_ immigration or customs interaction might involve.

------
drawkbox
Canada is leading in personal freedoms and new markets with this move, ending
cannabis prohibition that is long overdue and a step in ending the drug wars.

The policy change regarding viewing drugs not as criminal but decriminalized
and a health issue where needed, is the safer thing to do in a regulated
market that will improve safety for recreational use and harm reduction. The
War on Drugs started as an attack on personal freedoms and made drugs more
dangerous both in production and use, spawning all sorts of synthetics that
are more dangerous and black market mafia forces spawning violence just like
during alcohol prohibition.

Maybe in 2019 the US can be next as a whole ending cannabis prohibition, about
50 years after the kickoff of Nixon's drug wars due to losing to Leary in the
SCOTUS over the Marihuana Tax Act [1]

> _Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6 (1969), is a U.S. Supreme Court case
> dealing with the constitutionality of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Timothy
> Leary, a professor and activist, was arrested for the possession of
> marijuana in violation of the Marihuana Tax Act. Leary challenged the act on
> the ground that the act required self-incrimination, which violated the
> Fifth Amendment. The unanimous opinion of the court was penned by Justice
> John Marshall Harlan II and declared the Marihuana Tax Act unconstitutional.
> Thus, Leary 's conviction was overturned. Congress responded shortly
> thereafter by replacing the Marihuana Tax Act with the newly written
> Controlled Substances Act while continuing the prohibition of certain drugs
> in the United States_

Unfortunately, it is too bad leading states like Colorado, Washington, Oregon,
California, Nevada and more aren't able to capitalize on the markets until the
US as a whole federally ends prohibition. US states that are forward looking
are cut off from banking, interstate commerce, global investment and are being
held back by the anti-market approach of the current prohibitions.

Canada stepped up to first mover globally for cannabis which will lead to a
chance at global cannabis companies being Canadian.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leary_v._United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leary_v._United_States)

~~~
ovulator
What markets? Canada can only sell to itself. California has a larger
population than Canada does.

~~~
gillette
Canada sells a _significant_ amount to the US for medical purposes and legal
sales.

~~~
refurb
Source? I’m genuinely interested in the numbers.

~~~
Harvey-Specter
The Canadian government started publishing the production and export numbers
for licences medical producers at the end of 2017 [0]. Looks like the total
amount exported is a few hundred kilograms of dried canabis and a few dozen
liters of cannabis oil per month.

[0] [https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-
medica...](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-
medication/cannabis/licensed-producers/market-data.html)

~~~
refurb
That doesn’t seems like a huge amount to be honest.

It’s not unusual for marijuana busts in the US to be measured in tons.

I’d assume total US consumption is probably in the thousands of tons of
marijuana?

------
walrus01
Anti weed people made a lot of noise when CO and WA legalized retail sales 4
years ago, as if it would cause mass chaos, but really nothing much has
changed in those states. Law enforcement have much bigger problems to deal
with like a fentanyl epidemic, and Seattle's rapidly growing homeless
population and property crime problem.

~~~
xoa
There's a lot of "monster under the bed" psychology used by opponents of this
stuff, same happened with gay marriage. It's an exploitation of information
asymmetry basically, most people simply don't have time to really look into
details of everything, so the default "safe" position is generally seen to be
the status quo unless they personally experience something wrong (either
themselves or via part of their close social network, family/friends/close
coworkers etc). Dishonest campaigners can lie and posit endless "possible"
harms that are hard to conclusively disprove so long as there are no real
world experiments anywhere, and have proven to be able to quite successfully
delay progress for a long time. Having it be illegal can be sticky as well
since it encourages people to hide how they personally are connected.

However some consolation can be derived from it being a castle of sand and
thus subject to a real tipping point effect. As soon as some trailblazer does
manage to move forward and shine a light under the bed and it turns out that
no, there is no monster, the sky does not in fact fall, and people realize
that they do in fact know many people involved who were just hiding it before.
Then it fairly rapidly becomes a non-issue to the majority of the population
as they move on to new concrete (or invented, but new anyway) concerns.
Hopefully the drug "war" will soon become the latest example.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
You mean pot is safe, Muslims are not waiting to kill me on every corner, and
if a homosexual person looks at me I won't catch AIDS? What about that
healthcare thing? I heard free healthcare will turn me into a communist.

~~~
moate
>>I heard free healthcare will turn me into a communist. God, if that's the
case I would have been campaigning twice as hard to get it in place!

------
fredley
This will be very interesting to watch. So far the marijuana debate seems to
be stifled by the lack of hard evidence of what would happen were the drug
legalised in a developed Western nation. Uruguay is different enough from the
US etc. to be discountable, but Canada is not.

Many advocates for legalisation will show how it is expected to reduce the
overall harm from the drug. It will be interesting to see if this plays out in
practice. I for one am hopeful.

~~~
stock_toaster
> lack of hard evidence of what would happen were the drug legalised in a
> developed Western nation

Does the Netherlands not count?

~~~
IkmoIkmo
No, it is illegal.

Consumption and carrying small amounts is tolerated, police will not take any
action and public attorneys never prosecute these cases.

But production is illegal and besides two small plants in your home,
completely not tolerated. If you get caught with say 10 plants they're
destroyed with few other consequences. If you get caught with a more
considerable production however, you get prosecuted.

A lot of softdrug related crime isn't connected to consumption but rather
production. The Netherlands isn't a good case study for studying effects on
that kind of crime etc.

Same with many other drugs like xtc. Consumption is rarely criminally
targetted. Production is. Virtually ever farmer in the south of the country
gets approached by drug producers, there's a whole undergeound web of crime,
black money, corruption etc.

~~~
arandr0x
Production is also largely illegal in Canada, with the exception in some of
the province of very limited growing for personal use. Legalization is, of
course, legalizing consumption, there will be a government monopoly on the
parts of the chains that actually generate money.

You'll have to wait a while for the case study -- maybe until the US itself
legalizes.

~~~
bregma
Production is legal and regulated in Canada. It's big business, and a major
employer in my region. The value of my shares in cannabis-industry ETFs have
tripled in the last few months.

~~~
arandr0x
It's so regulated as to be effectively impossible for individuals to get into
unless they have serious connections. I've seen the stocks on the TSX too. I
was going by the meaning of the previous posters, which seemed to be saying
that all the previously illegal players in the food chain could now step into
the limelight and/or that new players could easily get in the industry -- it
couldn't be farther from the truth.

It's true that those businesses who benefitted from the regulation stand to be
making serious money, and I suppose that is different from the situation in
the Netherlands in a major way.

------
706f6f70
The really interesting studies will be longitudinal IMO. It's almost certainly
not going to be another tobacco, but it strikes me as impossible that smoking
marijuana is harmless. Should also be interesting to see what marijuana
culture develops when the entire country is allowed to consume it legally.

~~~
neonscribe
It is extremely likely that inhaling combustion products of any kind is
harmful to our health.

~~~
shittyadmin
Pretty much - however the differences we've seen so far are quite interesting.
Lung cancer and COPD risks don't seem to be what we'd think for cannabis smoke
based what we know of tobacco smoke. Somewhat more minor lung conditions are
definitely present though.

It'll also be interesting to see how things like dry herb vapes differ, they
basically just heat the cannabis to 350-400 degrees where the cannabinoids and
terpenes vaporize without burning it, they seem like the best way to go if you
want a reasonably good dose control and safety margin at the moment. Avoids
many of the issues with concentrate vapes, flavorings, cheap heating coils,
etc but I still have some doubts on perfect safety there.

------
pbhjpbhj
>Ontario's new PC government has been quiet on prices, but said it aims to set
them at a rate that would be competitive with illicit dispensaries.

Do Canadian government set prices for many goods? Would the same prices apply
to giving people pot you grew at home?

Several times it mentions "smoking pot", surely they should be trying to make
vaping or other use normative otherwise you're inviting lots of illnesses
related to smoking anything.

Does cannabis get cut with other plant matter a lot, are they planning on any
enforcement there?

~~~
jbeales
At least until April, a government website is the only legal way to buy pot in
Ontario. Since they're selling it, they set the prices.

In a lot of provinces the only legal way to get pot is through a government
pot store. Alcohol works the same way; Ontario recently allowed the sales of
wine & beer in some grocery stores, but everything else is at the LCBO,
(government liquor stores), and the Beer Store, (which I _think_ might be
government run, but even if not it pretty much has a monopoly on beer sales).

~~~
kejaed
The Beer Store is an even worse story: it’s a monopoly that’s owned by the
breweries!

~~~
stan_rogers
It was worse before Brewers' Retail (the name before The Beer Store). You
needed to go to Molson for Molson, Labatt's for Labatt's, Carling for Carling,
Dow for Dow, etc., and there was nowhere to buy anything brewed in Canada but
not in Ontario since the LCBO could only sell international imports (by
written order, with nothing on display).

~~~
refurb
If anyone has watched the move “Strange Brew”, that’s exactly what the LCBO
stores looked like in the 1980’s.

No advertisements, no product on the shelves, just a person standing at a
register taking orders and you case of beer magically arriving on a conveyor
belt.

Weird to think about now.

~~~
bregma
That's what the Beer Stores looked like (and still do where I live). The LCBO
stopped looking like that in the 1970s, except no conveyor belt: they would
hand you your package in a brown paper bag, and you had to sign your order
form. Also, the LCBO did not sell beer because that monopoly went to Brewer's
Retail.

------
hackermailman
Sadly complete state control of online sales prevents us from running an
erlang written dope auction site or similar business.

~~~
kodablah
There is so much HN in this pithy comment, it's gorgeous.

------
plehoux
If you are interested to see what/how the products are marketed, see the SQDC
website from Quebec province: [https://www.sqdc.ca/en-
CA/](https://www.sqdc.ca/en-CA/)

1g = ~CAD$5

~~~
abledon
Quebec gov websites have great web design . The saaq also is a great example

~~~
simlevesque
That's nice to hear, I did one of them :)

~~~
abledon
Cool, I’m curious what the backend stack was ? Java, c# ?

~~~
simlevesque
No it's a huge Wordpress application. Started in 2016 and released in 2017.
It's not ideal but it ended up being great. A huge part of the website is
actually blog posts so it was a good match. I did not start the project and
choose the tech but I ended up doing a large part of the project and led it
when the lead dev quit (for unrelated reasons). I had lots of problems with
the government hoster (CSPQ) but it all worked out in the end. It's the CALQ's
website by the way.

~~~
abledon
Php niiice , I love when critical government infra runs on the most despised
languages on HN

~~~
simlevesque
It's not a critical infrastructure at all, it's just an info portal. It used
to be a full html website made with Microsoft Frontpage by one lady who works
there. We use PHP so that instead of a single huge html page filled with info
which is useless for 90% of the people who'd read it, we ask your profile and
then we filter only the relevant information.

------
dredds
Has a nice ring to it; "Canada Canabiz"

Congrats from the rest of us in the world who are still waiting!

------
ajcodez
It could be a head start towards concentrating cannabis ownership in Canada,
similar to mining. Voters also appreciate progressive changes. Good move by
the government.

------
Dowwie
Big Money has been flowing into Canadian canna-startups for years, featuring
absolutely massive operations. Founders are claiming that their capacity is
intended to supply the "International Market". I don't see how this is
possible in state-regulated marketplaces, though. Why would, for instance,
Massachusetts or California regulators allow local dispensaries to sell
imported product? Even intra-state trade is uncertain.

~~~
moate
It's not "why would California allow Colorado weed to get sold there" it's
"will the Feds get involved because it's now an interstate commerce issue".

IDK that the individual states would care where the product is being brought
in from (hey, just tax the out of state stuff when it crosses the border!)
because it doesn't limit their ability to influence/control the sale and usage
in their state. You can exist in a gray area of "states rights" if everything
is done in house.

Eventually, the US will likely tip this way. The blue states are on board
because they often see it as a criminal justice issue and taxable market. The
red states will eventually want to get in on those agriculture jobs as their
economies continue to slump (and as the older voters die out, since statistic
show that younger generations have fewer issues with it).

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's not "why would California allow Colorado weed to get sold there" it's
> "will the Feds get involved because it's now an interstate commerce issue".

Wickard v. Filburn made it pretty clear that it's an interstate commerce issue
way before that. The federal restraint on internal state-legalized trade is
forbearance, not tied to any Constitutional principle.

> IDK that the individual states would care where the product is being brought
> in from (hey, just tax the out of state stuff when it crosses the border!)

Since when are state import duties not expressly prohibited by the
Constitution?

------
cmrdporcupine
I don't trust Shopify (or any other merchant) to run the online Ontario
Cannabis store in a way that won't ultimately lead to an American federal
policing agency demanding records and the names of all customers ending up on
some list that Homeland security can peruse during border crossings.

So I won't be partaking for that reason, among others.

------
lambersley
Beyond usage of legal Cannabis in Canada, US Border agents can deny entry to
those who work or invest in the Cannabis market.

~~~
lwf
From [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/world/canada/marijuana-
le...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/world/canada/marijuana-legalization-
explainer.html)

> Canadians who admit at the border to using marijuana may be refused
> admission, according to the United States border authorities. But the border
> agency said it would not routinely quiz Canadian travelers about their
> cannabis habits after Wednesday.

> Employees of marijuana companies and their investors will generally be
> allowed to enter the United States, the agency said, if they are not coming
> on marijuana-related business. But the agency said those people might no
> longer be able to obtain or hold cards that speed up border crossings.

------
r3bl
Don't forget: The current marijuana laws around the world can all be basically
pinpointed to a single person: Harry motherfucking Anslinger[0], who was in
the position of power within the US for unprecedented 32 years. He got in
power 16 years before Trump was born, and ended up being in power until Trump
turned 16.

That guy loved to use anecdotes instead of facts, and presented marijuana as a
drug that makes you kill people. As an example, he often used a case in which
a guy from Florida killed his parents and chopped their bodies, always failing
to mention that this person was recommended to go to a mental institution and
didn't end up going there because his parents vouched for him.

After Harry was done with criminalizing marijuana within the US, he started
advocating for other countries to do as well, being the US representative in
the United Nations Narcotics Commission. Even Thailand ended up criminalizing
it, despite marijuana usage being embedded in their culture and history. The
fear of the US turning their backs on you was and remained a risky action for
smaller countries.

The good news is we're on our way to revert his fuckery within a century. The
bad news is that his fuckery lasted a century and got countless people sent to
jail.

For those interested in how the current drug laws came to be, I highly
recommend you to read Chasing The Scream[1]. It has completely changed my
perspective of drug usage and war on drugs and I consider it one of the best
nonfiction books I got my hands on so far.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream)

~~~
VLM
The real lesson of Anslinger is you take a guy who's hungry for power and feed
him, and regardless of actual need you'll get a 10K person department under
his control eventually. Its a misallocation thing. NACA (the predecessor of
NASA) was 15 years old when Anslinger gained power, and if he was put in
control of NACA we'd probably have landed on the moon before Pearl Harbor or
some similar ridiculous accomplishment. But no, he was misallocated into some
backwater of law enforcement, and thru personal skill he turned it from a
backwater into maybe the dominant force in the field. Or more realistic than
putting him in charge of future-NASA, if he instead were assigned to the SEC
which was formed a couple years too late for him, imagine a world where a
super-cop pounds down financial crime.

There are bad boomer sports analogies with "the hot hand" and "the playmaker"
and honestly I don't think Anslinger cared much about weed at all, as seen by
his statements before he gained power; all he cared about was building a 10K
person department, which led to the DEA we have today. Big corporate PR
oriented mission statements mean nothing to people today, makes you wonder if
they'll be vilified for ruining lives decades from now in some weird
unanticipated quirk.

Anslinger wasn't evil so much as he was tragic. What a waste, both his
organizational skills and all the lives ruined as a side effect for decades
after.

Most discussion about the civilization wide effects of too many people for too
few jobs focus on what millions of manual laborers or white collars being non-
gainfully employed will do.. but another problem is imagine a world with 1000x
as many Anslingers all able to build an empire, yet there are no useful
productive empires to build, leading to 1000x the insanity of current drug
laws in other fields. Imagine IP allocation, DNS resolution, or software
licensing turned into a DEA-like dystopia, simply because there's no real jobs
for empire builder-type people.

------
forkLding
Been seeing a lot of don't get high and drive govt. ads here in Canada, feels
surreal.

------
qwerty456127
Government stores OMG.

~~~
giarc
Many provinces have a long history with government run liquor stores (see LCBO
in Ontario, BC Liquor in BC, SAQ in Quebec). There are pro's and con's to
those stores.

~~~
qwerty456127
Nice to know, thanks, I've never head about this phenomenon before, used to
think government run stores only exist in officially communist countries like
China.

~~~
dragonwriter
State liquor stores have been a thing in parts of the US, too.

------
agumonkey
Slight digression, yesterday someone told me the existence of the Kratom
plant. Which seems another potent and not harmful leaf that can improve your
quality of life. (the few research on it is muddy so grain of salt required,
but the amount of people shouting publicly for it in the US gets one
thinking).

~~~
jgrahamc
Are you implying that marijuana is "not harmful" and "can improve your quality
of life"?

~~~
denerio-a
Less harmful than alcohol, without a shadow of a doubt. Zero recorded deaths,
in thousands of years of medical use - can :any: other substance say the same?

And yes for many, many people it absolutely improves their quality of life
dramatically.

So, I have no idea why you’re taking issue with this statement (unless you
work for a pharma co / drug gang, in which case I totally get why you would).

~~~
jgrahamc
I'm taking issue with that statement because I think the rhetoric around
marijuana is misguided. I think it's swung too far to the "there's nothing
wrong with marijuana at all" side and that's dangerous. Like alcohol it's
important to recognize that it is not harmless. That doesn't mean it should be
illegal, just that it should be regulated and reported on accurately.

~~~
denerio-a
I’ll agree with that, but you should know that’s not how your statement came
across, especially the part where you seemed to deny that people could improve
their quality of life with it.

If you want people to have reasonable awareness of the potential issues,
that’s nice and all - but there will be a pendulum swing from the decades of
bullshit from its demonization. If you want to lessen the effects of that, try
to be more specific on potential harm without denying the positives.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yeah, that's fair criticism.

