Front Burner - Taking the pulse of weed legalization

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

"This really is the beginning of a cultural shift," says Solomon Israel, cannabis reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Nearly two months into cannabis legalization he breaks down the complaints - from low quality to short supplies - and the positives - including the benefits that legal weed provides for medical research.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. I'm Jamie Poisson.

We spent years anticipating it. We will be introducing legislation in the spring of 2017. The new recreational cannabis regime will officially come into force on October 17th. So we're less than two weeks out. On some fronts, things are a little iffy, to be honest. And then it came. Canada's Emancipation Day on weed. Coming into it, there were all these things people were worried about. Like the idea that every street corner would smell like weed. Or that people would be driving high. Or missing work.

Obviously, that there could be a run on ketchup chips. Well, the pop-pocalypse in Canada, it hasn't really occurred. But not everything has been smooth sailing. We never really know when we're gonna be getting our shipment, but this morning we did receive one box. There's been empty shelves, long waits, high prices, and people complain that the product on offer, it just isn't very good. And then there are big legal issues that affect people's lives. Hardening is not going to help people out the way that people need to be helped out. So, almost two months in, how's it going?

How has Canada been adjusting to a world with legal cannabis? I'm going to be talking to Solomon Israel about all of this. He's the cannabis reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. That's today on FrontBurner. So we're talking to you today because we want to get a sense of how well weed legalization has been going in Canada. So scale of one to 10, in your opinion, how smoothly do you think things have gone since October 17th? 10 being the smoothest? 10 being the smoothest.

I would put it at about a four or a five. Oh, that is low. That's lower than I thought you were going to put it. Yeah, you know, it is. But it's also, I think the idea, it was unrealistic to expect that it was ever going to be, you know, an eight or a nine or a 10, right? This is a big, big policy change that is sort of at the intersection of the wills of multiple levels of government, right? You know, all levels of government, really. For the first couple years, we're not seeing this as a revenue generator at the government of Alberta. We're seeing it as a net loss.

The federal government still cannot give our police a single reliable piece of equipment to test for drug impaired driving. And then there's, you know, to complicate things further, there's also private corporations. So there's a lot of different actors in what we call cannabis legalization. And, you know, the things that they're all doing don't always line up so nicely with each other. And I think it's, you know, it's such a big change that it's going to take a lot of time. So let's talk about what's going wrong first, just because that's always the most fun thing to talk about. One by one, let's go through the main complaints you've been hearing about. Yeah. And, you know, even before I get into the laundry list

of complaints about legalization here, I think it's important to note that a lot of it really just depends on where you live, right? Like you're in Ontario where people have only been able to legally access cannabis through the Ontario Cannabis Store, which has been a bit of a debacle. In Ontario, over 1,000 complaints about the government's online pot store have landed on the provincial ombudsman's desk. Can you tell me how it's been a bit of a debacle? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think the Ontario cannabis store really matters because that's like, you know, almost half of Canadians live in Ontario, like 40% or something like that.

And they are only able to buy it from this online government-run store that, frankly, did a really poor job of getting product out in the first month. I mean, people were waiting for weeks and weeks and weeks, despite the fact that this store said they were going to be ready. And then, you know, a lot of people have been just complaining about the quality of the legal cannabis that they've received. This woman is one of a dozen people complaining online that they found mold on their legal bud. This woman is one of a dozen people complaining online that they found mold on their legal bud. So that's when I found mold on the pot was after I had already consumed some of it. Another complaint that consumers have is that legal cannabis still remains quite expensive compared to the illicit stuff.

I would call myself a cannabis entrepreneur. I obviously work within what is considered the black market. A dealer, for example, could sell this for $200 an ounce at that price, still make $50. In the legal market, this would probably be $300. I personally expect that that is going to change over time. Let's talk a little bit more of some other complaints. Let's talk a little bit more of some other complaints. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the big, and this is, again, one of those things that really depends on where you live, is that there are different provincial laws about where and how you can use cannabis.

And some of those provincial laws mean that people, and no surprise, it's people who are maybe a bit less fortunate, effectively have no place to use cannabis without either breaking the law or potentially getting in trouble with their landlord, right? So, for example, here in Manitoba, where I am, the provincial government has banned the smoking and vaporizing of cannabis pretty much anywhere out of doors at any time. I would include, but as lawyers like to say, not be limited to, streets, sidewalks, parks, beaches, school grounds, playgrounds, restaurants, patios and decks, and on the grounds of health care facilities. So, you know, if I'm someone who lives in an apartment where there's no smoking allowed and I don't want to get in trouble with my landlord, I have absolutely nowhere to go. my landlord, I have absolutely nowhere to go. Another big complaint that a lot of people have is, you know, the government had sort of hinted that there would be some kind of amnesty for people who had been convicted of previous cannabis crimes before legalization. The government of Canada intends to present legislation, which when enacted, will allow these individuals to apply for a pardon as long as they have completed their sentence.

There will be no further waiting period and no fee. And now that that amnesty has kind of come through, it's really disappointing for a lot of people. You know, they're basically offering to expedite the pardons process for people who were convicted, say, of simple cannabis possession in the past. But you still have to apply for those pardons, and it doesn't actually remove the crime from your record, right? So even if I'm pardoned for that, if I'm trying to cross the border into the U.S. in the future, they can still see that I once had that conviction. The government could have gone the route of simply expunging, which is really just deleting those crimes from people's records. And they chose not to do that, which was, I think, really disappointing for a lot of people who thought that

legalization maybe would be focused a little bit more on social justice. Right. So can you elaborate for me a little bit more on the people who felt that this could have done more for social justice? What do you mean when you say that? Well, I think that we understand pretty well at this point that cannabis prohibition and drug prohibition in general has an inordinately large effect on people of color and of people who are sort of at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. So I think that people were looking for something from the government that could help reverse that trend. You know, and I mentioned that this has to do, this is a characteristic of all drug prohibition, that it tends to be enforced

more harshly against people of color and the poor. But, you know, because cannabis is or has been the most popular illicit drug, that's often sort of the way that people get thrust into the criminal justice system is because they're smoking a joint and they get busted by a cop. What about things like increased impaired driving? Are we seeing any of that happening? So, anecdotally, no. I mean, I'm sure there would be some police, some law enforcement agencies somewhere in Canada that would say they have seen. But from what I've heard so far, that hasn't happened quite yet, if at all. You know, I was actually,

I was just here in Winnipeg at a press conference with the Winnipeg police where they were showing off their new drug impaired driving sort of a detection device, a saliva, like an oral testing device. And I asked them, have you guys, have you seen any increased driving? And they basically said, you know, we can't tell you yet because they only actually take those stats after someone has been charged and convicted. So it takes months. You know, if I were to get pulled over for impaired driving tomorrow and eventually charged and convicted, that's a process that would take months before it made its way into the justice statistics. And what about these devices that you mentioned, the devices to help test for impaired driving? What do we know about those and their efficacy?

Yeah, there's, you know, there's a federally approved device now called the Draeger Drug Test 5000. No pipetting. No dripping. No timing. The Draeger Drug Test 5000 analysis system makes sampling quick, easy, and hygienic. Basically, if they have reason to suspect that a driver has been using drugs or might be impaired by drugs,

it's one new tool that they have to confirm that suspicion and move to sort of the next step of their investigation, which would be probably detaining you and doing a more formal test. So I actually volunteered to have one of these tested on me when I was at the Winnipeg police station here. They swabbed this little thing, kind of like a Q-tip attached to a little plastic cassette. I kind of swabbed the Q-tip end of that around in my mouth for maybe 45 seconds. And then the police officer stuck it into a machine. That machine sort of whirred and grumbled for about five minutes while it processed the sample. And then it determined that I did not have any detectable concentration of either traces of cannabis or traces of cocaine in my saliva. It's good to know.

It would have been funny if I failed. Yeah, while you were on the job, yeah. I figured if I'd failed, it would make a good story. But no, I didn't think I was going to fail because I wasn't high at work. But yeah, so if that had happened to me, say, you know, let's say that I'd been driving and I crossed the center line and there was a cop behind me and they pulled me over. They said, hey, that guy looks like he might be impaired. And they decided to run that test on me. If things were working as they should, at that point, they could have said, OK, well, you know, we don't see any drugs in your system, so we'll let you go. The important thing to note about this tool is it's just one tool. It's not really – it doesn't prove impairment to the satisfaction of a court.

If I fail one of these tests, I have not yet been investigated to the point where I could be charged with impaired driving. They would have to do a further investigation. The thing where it gets really tricky with legal cannabis now is that the same law that authorized these new testing devices also authorized special blood tests for drug concentrations in your blood. So if I were to fail one of those tests, or if police had another reason to suspect that I was driving while impaired by drugs, please now have the power to demand a blood sample from me and then send that to a laboratory to test for certain amounts of drugs in my bloodstream, including cannabis. The problem is that the science just isn't there. There's really no science to show that if you have a certain amount of

THC metabolites, they're called, in your bloodstream, that you aren't necessarily impaired. And I think we do expect court challenges to those blood drug testing laws coming down the line in the next couple of years. laws coming down the line in the next couple of years. So before we go to what's going right, do you think we're missing anything big? Well, I think, you know, one complaint that a lot of cannabis users have, it still leaves a lot of things illegal. So it's legal to possess legal cannabis in certain amounts if you're an adult, but it's still illegal to possess what's called illicit cannabis, which is basically anything that was grown outside of the boundaries of the law or sold outside of the boundaries of the law.

Right. Although I would imagine that that's really hard to prove. If I have weed in my pocket, how can anyone know where it came from? Exactly. Especially considering the fact that, you know, home cultivated cannabis, as long as you're growing it within the rules, the federal rules and the provincial rules wherever you live, that's still licit cannabis. That's legal cannabis, but it doesn't come in some kind of, you know, store-bought container proving that it is. I don't really see police enforcing this too much against individual users. It seems to me so far that they've been using the illicit cannabis laws against people who are producing and selling cannabis. But I think it's understandable for people, you know, they heard on the news, oh, you know, weed is going to be legal. And then they find out, wait, okay, so only some weed is legal and other weed is still illegal, and I could still go to prison for possessing it. I think it's kind of understandable that

people might be a bit put off by that. So let's talk about what's going right. What are some of the things that you think have been really positive about the legalization of weed here? I will say this. Despite all the things I said before, it is still now possible for an adult Canadian to go to a store or order online and order a reasonable amount of cannabis and possess it and use it in their home without breaking any laws and without risking legal consequences.

That's a really big step forward. I think we shouldn't discount that. And it's the first step in what's going to be a really, I think, a long process in sort of fixing all those little problems and kind of tweaking all the kinks out of this. You know, I've been really interested in, anecdotally, this cultural shift. I've been at dinner parties where people are now bringing out vape pens or joints where I don't think I would have seen that before. You know, at Thanksgiving, I mean, I watched my dad take a drag from a vape pen, which I promise you is something that I wouldn't have seen until like this moment where it became legal. So, you know, I have been finding that really interesting to watch people

sort of come out a little bit more and be more public in their reconsumption. Yeah. And I think you've touched on something important there, which I think this really is the beginning of a cultural shift. I think it's also stimulating an increase in the number of people who are interested in cannabis as a medicine. I think that the fact that that stigma is just starting to disappear, I think that does play a role there. Although, again, I think, you know, the diminishing of that stigma, I think, is going to be a years long process, kind of a generational thing. Let's talk about the scientific potential, which is what you just touched on, now that these legal barriers have been removed.

Yeah. So, you know, one of the big problems for anyone who's wanted to research cannabis is that it's been illegal and it's really hard to get funding for that kind of research. But the fact that it's legal and you can access a legal controlled supply now in Canada means that Canadian researchers can do some really, really fascinating things. And this is really opening up a lot of doors. Again, this is the kind of thing that's going to take years for this to yield dividends because doing clinical research takes a long time and a lot of money. But this is the kind of benefit of cannabis legalization that we're going to see in the future. Do we know anything about the economic impact of the legalization of weed so far?

future. Do we know anything about the economic impact of the legalization of weed so far? Yeah. So just like the impaired driving statistics, it takes months for economists. Economic statistics are kind of backward looking, right? They're saying what happened in the previous quarter. I think it's going to take, because it's only been about a month and a half, two months since legalization. It's going to take a while for the impact of that to be felt really in the Canadian economy, but it's there. It's happening. We know these companies are hiring. We know they're employing people and they've been ramping up that hiring and employment before legalization. And I think it's fair to say, you know, I was looking last night, there was a TD economics report and they're saying, look,

we do expect a certain boost to GDP, like a one-time boost from cannabis legalization, because activity that was previously in a black market is now being captured in the above-ground economy. So, yeah, I mean, there are jobs, there are employment opportunities, taxes, and that's another benefit that I think we will be seeing over time. that I think we will be seeing over time. So we've talked about what's going wrong and what's going right today. How do you see this playing out in the upcoming federal election? Yeah, so basically, you know, the good thing for the federal government

is that gives them some time to work out these kinks and also to, you know, see some of those benefits, like the economic benefits that I'm talking about before the federal election. The bad news is a lot of these things are still going to be happening. You know what I mean? There's still going to be bad news stories. There will be inevitably a case of some cannabis-impaired driver who, you know,

who kills themselves or someone else, frankly, just as there was before legalization. And the federal conservatives, I think, are are gonna make hay with that you know that's going to be a campaign issue i would expect anyway i think when people start to see these consequences they're going to blame trudeau's failures for it and when they start to when the when we hear concerns about health experts and the access of by young people with who are still undergoing brain development having now access to this uh to marijuana, we're going to start to see the pushback, the anger from Canadians who are concerned that the government has adopted this approach. I do think that one real risk for the liberals is that edibles are going to be

legalized and available for sale sometime next year, sometime before next October. There's going to be some cases of people having bad experiences with edibles, right? You know, they can be a powerful drug. And, you know, you don't know that they're coming. They can hit you really hard. It's pretty inevitable that after edibles become available for commercial sale, there are going to be stories of people simply taking too much and having a bad experience. You know, they could do something stupid or they could just have a really bad time and maybe go to the hospital in a panic. If those kinds of things come up around election time, I mean, if I were the conservatives,

I would be making an issue of that for sure. So thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Hey, it's my pleasure, Jamie. I really appreciate it. Since Saul and I had this conversation last week, there's been a few developments. First, the Quebec government tabled a bill that would outlaw consumption of cannabis in public and raise the legal age to 21. These could be the toughest laws around weed in the country. Also, Shoppers Drug Mart was just granted a license to sell medical marijuana. Unclear whether you can collect points on it. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.

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