The recreational cannabis system in Ontario has been riddled with issues since the beginning and a solution isn’t anywhere in sight. Let’s take a deeper look into what caused the system to be in this spot in the first place.
If someone bothered to ask me what’s wrong with the recreational cannabis system in Ontario, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start. Everything? Most of it?
There are so many issues pertaining to the way legalization was handled that the mere fact there won’t be any stores open 7 months into legalization is an explanation in itself.
Initially, the government of Canada set out to legalize recreational cannabis under the pretense of fighting against the rampant black market. The legalization combined with thorough educational programs was supposed to wipe out the black market. However, Ontario is nowhere near that point.
In fact, the battle against the black market isn’t really happening. The black market only got empowered with the legalization of cannabis. The lack of retail stores and private online shops in Ontario has made weed dealers a fortune in these last 5 months.
According to Vice, 72% of Canada’s recreational cannabis sales this year have been made in the black market, rather than in the legal sector. Seeing how Ontario’s market was valued at $1.6 to $2.3 billion dollars yearly, we can safely assume that the street dealers are still swimming in cash.
A bad start
How do you mess up a system more than half of the nation was looking forward to? Well, easy — just ask the politicians in Ontario.
You start by announcing it two years ahead, and in those two years, you basically do nothing significant until it’s time to legalize. “Why”, you may ask?
Oh well, that’s an even simpler explanation.
The way the recreational cannabis system in Canada is set up, the federal government sets laws that provinces get to work around, in the sense of how they want the system to be managed.
Then, the provinces decide if they want to have a private, somewhat private, or a fully government-run system in place.
The Liberals, who were in power in Ontario at the time, knew that elections were coming in mid-2018, and they didn’t really bother with the legalization effort as they had other laws to make while they were still in office.
Basically, Ontario Liberals knew they were most likely going to be voted out, and did everything in their power to affect the laws already in effect. Sure, at the time the PM of Ontario Kathleen Wynne put out a plan which would handle legalization.
But, nobody liked the plan. Here’s what it looked like. Prime Minister Wynne promised to:
This isn’t me hating on Liberals, as I’m pretty liberal myself. I’m not dragging them through the mud, as the Progressive Conservative Party didn’t do any better itself as we’ll see a bit down the line. I’m just pointing out the mistakes they made in the first steps.
Related
PCs won the election — what does this mean for cannabis in Ontario?
An even worse finish
In the summer of 2018, just months before cannabis was to be legalized, the elections happened in Ontario and brought about a change in the political scene.
With that change, the PC party got its hands onto the power to manage the way the cannabis system was to be implemented after October 17th, 2018.
At one point in time, the PC’s talked about shifting the system towards a more privatized model, but that never happened. In fact, they doubled down on the government-run system.
This is what was rumored to be the conservatives plan, but turned out to be a total lie:
Once the PC’s were in the government, they created the Ontario Cannabis Store, something that was also in Wynne’s plan.
Then, they said “screw it” to retail stores, and decided nobody gets to open a store until April because it would create disarray in the system(?!?) in the sense of unexpected shortages or gluts in the market.
The PC’s then decided to dig an even deeper hole and proudly announced that the first 25 retail store licenses will be given out via a lottery so that everyone would have the same fair chance to participate in the cannabis industry. What!?!
That is so unprofessional, and from obvious reasons very ignorant as well.
You’re gonna give one of the first licenses to some no-name dude in the GTA? Guess what’s gonna happen – one or of the 25 amateurs you picked is going to fail at his job and not open a store by April.
That already happened, but luckily for us, the AGCO picked suitable replacements, which now have less time to open the store.
This could have been completely avoided if the government first gave out these licenses to established retailers and cannabis producers with the capability to open a store in no-time.
Or, better yet, give everyone access to these licenses in order to successfully battle the black market, which was the initial idea of this legalization.
That didn’t happen and now we’re waiting on the stores to open doors to their customers on April 1st.
If someone bothered to ask me what’s wrong with the recreational cannabis system in Ontario, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start. Everything? Most of it?
There are so many issues pertaining to the way legalization was handled that the mere fact there won’t be any stores open 7 months into legalization is an explanation in itself.
Initially, the government of Canada set out to legalize recreational cannabis under the pretense of fighting against the rampant black market. The legalization combined with thorough educational programs was supposed to wipe out the black market. However, Ontario is nowhere near that point.
In fact, the battle against the black market isn’t really happening. The black market only got empowered with the legalization of cannabis. The lack of retail stores and private online shops in Ontario has made weed dealers a fortune in these last 5 months.
According to Vice, 72% of Canada’s recreational cannabis sales this year have been made in the black market, rather than in the legal sector. Seeing how Ontario’s market was valued at $1.6 to $2.3 billion dollars yearly, we can safely assume that the street dealers are still swimming in cash.
A bad start
How do you mess up a system more than half of the nation was looking forward to? Well, easy — just ask the politicians in Ontario.
You start by announcing it two years ahead, and in those two years, you basically do nothing significant until it’s time to legalize. “Why”, you may ask?
Oh well, that’s an even simpler explanation.
The way the recreational cannabis system in Canada is set up, the federal government sets laws that provinces get to work around, in the sense of how they want the system to be managed.
Then, the provinces decide if they want to have a private, somewhat private, or a fully government-run system in place.
The Liberals, who were in power in Ontario at the time, knew that elections were coming in mid-2018, and they didn’t really bother with the legalization effort as they had other laws to make while they were still in office.
Basically, Ontario Liberals knew they were most likely going to be voted out, and did everything in their power to affect the laws already in effect. Sure, at the time the PM of Ontario Kathleen Wynne put out a plan which would handle legalization.
But, nobody liked the plan. Here’s what it looked like. Prime Minister Wynne promised to:
- Open 40 stores by legalization date
- Have LCBO run the cannabis market in Ontario
- Open another 150 stores by 2020
- Have government-run online sales
This isn’t me hating on Liberals, as I’m pretty liberal myself. I’m not dragging them through the mud, as the Progressive Conservative Party didn’t do any better itself as we’ll see a bit down the line. I’m just pointing out the mistakes they made in the first steps.
Related
PCs won the election — what does this mean for cannabis in Ontario?
An even worse finish
In the summer of 2018, just months before cannabis was to be legalized, the elections happened in Ontario and brought about a change in the political scene.
With that change, the PC party got its hands onto the power to manage the way the cannabis system was to be implemented after October 17th, 2018.
At one point in time, the PC’s talked about shifting the system towards a more privatized model, but that never happened. In fact, they doubled down on the government-run system.
This is what was rumored to be the conservatives plan, but turned out to be a total lie:
- No cap on the number of brick-and-mortar stores
- Have a heavily privatized system instead of government-run
- Private online stores
Once the PC’s were in the government, they created the Ontario Cannabis Store, something that was also in Wynne’s plan.
Then, they said “screw it” to retail stores, and decided nobody gets to open a store until April because it would create disarray in the system(?!?) in the sense of unexpected shortages or gluts in the market.
The PC’s then decided to dig an even deeper hole and proudly announced that the first 25 retail store licenses will be given out via a lottery so that everyone would have the same fair chance to participate in the cannabis industry. What!?!
That is so unprofessional, and from obvious reasons very ignorant as well.
You’re gonna give one of the first licenses to some no-name dude in the GTA? Guess what’s gonna happen – one or of the 25 amateurs you picked is going to fail at his job and not open a store by April.
That already happened, but luckily for us, the AGCO picked suitable replacements, which now have less time to open the store.
This could have been completely avoided if the government first gave out these licenses to established retailers and cannabis producers with the capability to open a store in no-time.
Or, better yet, give everyone access to these licenses in order to successfully battle the black market, which was the initial idea of this legalization.
That didn’t happen and now we’re waiting on the stores to open doors to their customers on April 1st.
