Bite Me The Show About Edibles
Helping cooks make great cannabis edibles at home.
Create your own tasty, healthy cannabis edibles and take control of your high life! Bite Me is a weekly show that helps home cooks make fun, safe and effective cannabis edibles. Listen as host Margaret walks you through an marijuana infused recipe that she has tested in her home kitchen or interviews with expert guests. New episodes every Thursday.
Bite Me The Show About Edibles
Buzz Kill: How Big Business Hijacked Cannabis Legalization
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.
Find his book on Amazon or your local independent bookstore.
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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 show about edibles, where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified ganger, margaret, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at life. I'm your host and certified gonger, margaret, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. Hello, friends, both old and new, welcome back to the show. This week's episode is one that I've been looking forward to releasing. Mike's book had a real impact on me and after reading it I knew I needed to have Mike on the show to discuss. If you're joining Bite Me for the first time, I'm glad you found me For regular listeners. I appreciate your support and curiosity as we navigate these important topics together. I encourage you to share this episode with one person right now.
Speaker 1:Mike DeViller has spent his entire career working in the field of drug use problems and solutions. He has been a counselor, teacher, community developer, collaborator, policy analyst, advocate and a director at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, one of Canada's largest mental health and addiction organizations. He's a faculty member at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, ontario. His book Buzzkill, the Corporatization of Cannabis, asks the question does cannabis legalization get it right? When you consider that our long-term legal drug industry of alcohol and tobacco cause more illness, injury, death and cost to the economy than all other illegal drugs combined, it seems an even more pressing question. But what does this mean for the consumer, the people like you and me who are accessing the legal adult use market or the legacy market? Are our children better protected? Is our cannabis supply safer? Does government regulation prevent bad actors? How does regulation make room for craft cannabis or social injustices from the harms of prohibition? We answer these questions and many more in this eye-opening conversation, relevant whether you're in Canada, the US or beyond.
Speaker 1:Please enjoy this conversation with Mike DeViller, all right, and we're live Well, live-ish. I guess Listeners invite me. I'm really excited to be joined today by Michael DeViller. He is the author of Buzzkill, the Corporatization of Cannabis in Canada. I mean, the book is specifically to Canada, but you do touch on a lot of other things. We're going to get into all the content of this excellent book that I think should be a must-read for anybody who's accessing an adult use market. And maybe you could just take a second, mike, to introduce yourself to the listeners of Bite Me and tell us what inspired you to write this book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, thanks for the introduction, margaret, and thanks for inviting me on the show. It's really kind of an interesting experience. I don't know if it was inspiration so much as a sense of obligation. Most of my career has been working in drug policy, specifically on the alcohol industry, the tobacco industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the illegal trade in drugs, and so I really having witnessed a whole career's worth of adventures with those industries in terms of regulatory violations and including corporate crime and at times a profound indifference to public health protection and relatively weak government regulation and then this new drug industry comes along, this unprecedented event with cannabis legalization. So the question that came up that I felt I really needed to get into this was to ask the question of would cannabis get it right, would it do better than its elder drug industry siblings? And I guess a major message of the book is that unfortunately no, we didn't get it right, that in fact the cannabis industry adopted the exact same playbook as has been used by alcohol, tobacco and pharma, and again enabled by permissive regulation. And so the book I think people should know it's not primarily about cannabis, the drug I mean. Obviously there's content in there about that, but it's really about the politics and the business of cannabis legalization. Now, I like that you know people are interested in. Well. Why is this important? You know well the reason it's important is that it's our long-term legal recreational drugs, alcohol and tobacco. They account for more illness, injury, deaths and cost to the economy related to drugs than all our illegal drugs combined.
Speaker 2:So that raises a very interesting question about what are the implications for cannabis making this historic journey from illegal, demonized street drug to this legal commercial commodity. And to even begin to answer that question, we have to get past what I think is kind of an oversimplistic notion that there are safe drugs and there are unsafe drugs. The reality is that any drug can be used safely and any drug can be used in a manner that's potentially harmful. It's really not so much about just the intrinsic properties of the drug, it's about us. What are the meanings that we attach to a drug and what are the decisions that we make in our use of that drug in terms of when and how much and under what circumstances? So that's the thing with commercial legalization is that we're now, all of a sudden, we're not just allowed to use this drug If the commercial interests prevail, we're actually encouraged to use this drug. And that's where product promotion and advertising and all that comes in, and that's always been a big interest of mine too. The psychology of advertising and what it does is it hijacks the meaning that we attach to products. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you're selling sustainable energy sources or organically grown vegetables, that might be a good thing to get people to think positively about those things.
Speaker 2:But we all know that drugs are not ordinary commodities. There's always some level of risk attached, and what we've seen with alcohol and tobacco is this cascade where we get an increase in advertising, then we get an increase in use and then we get an increase in the problems related to that use. And a very fair question that people ask well, why? I mean why would an increase in the number of people using a drug necessarily translate into an increase in problems?
Speaker 2:And the reason that happens is because in our society we seem to have there's a certain proportion of our society who are vulnerable to what I call appetites of pleasure, and yes, that includes alcohol and tobacco and it includes other drugs.
Speaker 2:It also includes things like gambling and video games and food and shopping and sex. There's a certain percentage of the population who will engage these appetites of pleasure in a way that it causes them problems. So as use of a drug increases among the general population, it also increases among that vulnerable portion of the population, and that's why we get this increase in problems. So why would we think that cannabis, as an appetite of pleasure, would be any different from all these other things? Now, the last point I'm going to make on that question, and it's maybe the most important one, is that none of that has ever been, or ever will be, a good reason to criminalize cannabis, and that is sort of the unfortunate history we have. None of this is a good reason to criminalize it. It's just a good reason to exercise some sensible caution in how we use it.
Speaker 1:Which is sort of like the public health angle that you talk extensively about in the book and I know you talk about in the book as well, like tobacco and alcohol being more harmful than all other drugs combined.
Speaker 1:And I think you also mentioned pharmaceuticals as well, grouped into that category, that even though this is something that could be potentially, you know, prescribed by a doctor, that's also in that group, because you know you watch TV and you see all the ads for a lot of pharmaceuticals that you know can potentially improve your life, but then they also include that long list of side effects that always come at the end of every commercial. And I guess maybe there's sometimes a little bit of pushback against the cannabis angle because, as somebody who's been in the cannabis space for quite some time and I'm a regular cannabis consumer, there's this notion that cannabis is relatively harmless and so anytime there's any kind of talk about cannabis use disorder or some of the other things that can come along with using cannabis heavily or on a regular basis, there's a lot of pushback against that notion because it is deemed, generally speaking, relatively safe, especially compared to a lot of other substances that you could take.
Speaker 2:Yes, you're absolutely right and I think again it goes back to my point that there's always going to be a proportion of the population who are going to find a way to get into trouble with it.
Speaker 2:And I think why cannabis enthusiasts sometimes get sort of their backs up a bit is because for years that was used as a reason to support keeping cannabis illegal. It says, well, it hurts people. Therefore, therefore, we have to make it illegal and no that and this is where the public health, I think, position is very important. We recognize that giving somebody a criminal record for what is, for the great majority of users, a harmless activity is that does a lot of public health harm too, so we have to separate. Is that does a lot of public health harm too, so we have to separate. There's this tradition you know of there's a portion of people who are harmful, then we have to make it illegal for everybody and no, that's where public health steps in and says no, we have to stop criminalizing this, but we still have to try to encourage people to exercise some reasonable caution in how they go about using it.
Speaker 1:Right Now. You also I mean you argued that legalization of cannabis was driven more by corporate interests than public health or social justice. Can you elaborate on that? And why should we care? Because from somebody like we're in Canada and we've enjoyed legal cannabis for six years now and yeah, why should we care?
Speaker 2:Okay, Well, let's go back a little bit in time and talk about social justice. There's so many interesting stories around this. If you look back to the early 1990s, the Liberal Party of Canada actually introduced legislation to decriminalize cannabis, and I'll just take a moment to make sure everybody understands the difference. I mean, legalization is what I call the beer store model. Right, you can go in and you can make a purchase. You can't do that in decriminalization. And decriminalization, if you get caught, you might get your product confisc. Caught, you might get your product confiscated, you might get a small fine, but you don't get a criminal record. So the liberals actually introduced legislation to do that much in the early 1990s, but despite the fact that they held a majority government for a continuous decade, they never, got around to actually passing the legislation.
Speaker 2:So you know, and what happened is that we continue to criminalize it. So for all those years, since the 1990s, almost every year there was an additional 20,000 or more Canadians who got criminal record for really harmless use of cannabis. So then fast forward a few decades, to 2016, and the federal NDP introduced a motion to the House of Commons to decriminalize cannabis, not to replace legalization, but just to be an interim measure, while the government would continue to take another two years to work out all the complex logistics of legalization and actually make it happen. But that was defeated by block voting of the conservatives and liberals. So we still have a few more years of people being criminalized that could have stopped it. So then we get when the liberals form a majority government again in 2015,. It very promptly sets up a task force to look into, to study this and make some recommendations, and that task force made two very clear statements against decriminalization as an interim measure. Even.
Speaker 2:And if you look at the Cannabis Act, it has some pretty brutal provisions still. It has some pretty brutal provisions still. The maximum penalty for possession of cannabis from an illegal source is five years in prison. Wow, five years. Yeah, that's pretty heavy duty Now. So the good news is that since legalization, arrests for possession have decreased quite substantially, but it hasn't all gone away. In 2019, if you look at the calendar year 2019, there were still 16,000 cannabis-related arrests made in Canada. Now, that's way down from what it used to be, but that's still a lot under so-called legalization. Now what became interesting also is that while possession charges went way down, there was this big increase in import-export charges and you know, some of us were saying, say what, what's that all about? And when you think about import and export, what do we imagine in our heads? We think of a truckload of cannabis crossing the border, or or a trunk car, a car trunk load of cannabis or at minimum we've all seen the movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the stuff you think of in movies At minimum a suitcase, full right.
Speaker 2:That's not what was happening. This was people being charged with import-export for a small amount of personal cannabis on their person as they crossed the border, which is pretty harmless. So you know. My point on social justice is that the Liberal Party never seemed to be that interested in cannabis law reform from a social justice perspective. It only got really passionate about it when it found a way to monetize it. That changed everything. So that's the social justice picture. I also want to address what you also asked about the public health approach, and for decades all kinds of drug policy organizations have been saying let's get rid of this criminal justice approach and use a public health approach, and that was a nice kind of cool sounding meme that a lot of people thought was good. What they did not tell us at any point was that there was a large number of liberal party elites and their senior bureaucrats who had already invested in cannabis production companies for therapeutic purposes.
Speaker 1:So is that more like on the medical side when you're talking about therapeutic purposes?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's exactly what that is.
Speaker 2:And so all those companies that had license for medical production now we're going to get their licenses expanded to include producing for recreational use.
Speaker 2:And, of course, all these guys in the party had positioned themselves beautifully to make huge returns on legalization with this much expanded recreational market, but we never heard about that.
Speaker 2:It took investigative journalists to dig up all that stuff.
Speaker 2:So then in 2015, when the Liberals again formed a majority government, in contrast to the low priority it gave decriminalization, it very quickly established the task force, and there were some really blatant conflicts of interest in this task force.
Speaker 2:So the chair the person who was appointed chair of the task force was a senior advisor at a law firm that had already publicly identified its aspiration to be the go-to advisors for the cannabis industry, and after the work of the task force, she was seen by some journalists at the Globe and Mail attending cannabis industry meetings and handing out her business card for her law firm. The co-chair had a consulting company and already had four clients who were cannabis production companies, and after the work of the task force, he was hired to a senior position at one of our country's most prominent cannabis producers. So this was not the objectivity that we really that really should be in place. In fact, I thought it was. I've been watching drug policy for a long time and I thought it was one of the most blatant conflicts of interest that I've seen over the course of my career.
Speaker 1: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 to sort of shape the potential, the legalization policy that was going to be rolled out, and yet many of these same people were also offering their services to potential licensed producers and people sitting on boards of licensed producers, the board of directors.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, margaret. Yes, good clarification. So what we found happened. So with that kind of bias, and right from the very beginning we found that the task force was generally making very industry friendly recommendations and in its final report what we saw is it did make some recommendations that would be, you know, good for public health, like the education programs, make sure people know what risks are, and so forth, but it didn't recommend anything that would encroach upon the industry's interest in market expansion and profits. For example, you know, minimum age was a really contentious issue and the ranges of recommendations that were made were from 18 at the low end and 25 got the high end, and both the task force recommended and the government approved the lowest end of that range at 18, which has major implications for market expansion. Now the proviso of course we need to talk about with that is that it did give a proviso where provinces, if they so chose, could raise the age, and most of the provinces, except Alberta and Quebec, did raise the age to 19. And then, a couple of years later, quebec surprised everybody by raising it to 21. So that was interesting.
Speaker 2:So just to finish, I would argue this was not about social justice and compassion. This was not about public health protection, this was strictly business. Now your question about why should we care? I love that question it's because this is bigger than cannabis cannabis and it's bigger than our other drug industries. This is a problem in every sector of our economy. Where you know, political pundits talk about neoliberalism, this process of allowing regulatory capture, as they call it, by industry, and it's just that our regulators are having this shift of doing more to protect industry rather than public health and safety. And the last point I'll make on that is that my book, I think, is often mistaken as being anti-cannabis, and it's not. It's in its essence, it's anti-corporate and it's anti neoliberalism, and I really wanted to use cannabis legalization as this very contemporary example that we were. You know, we had this opportunity to get it right and we didn't.
Speaker 1:Well, and you say something very salient there that, uh, that that the government, you know, has been working more to protect industry than working to protect the people that they supposedly represent, which I think is really interesting.
Speaker 1:And there are a lot of cannabis folks that have a, you know, a certain feeling about large corporate cannabis.
Speaker 1:Generally, when it comes to purchasing, if you're buying a product, you know if you have the option between buying craft versus buying corporate, most of the time people I shouldn't say most of the time I can speak for myself anyway I would choose craft over corporate because I just feel like the approach that they take to growing that plant and putting out a product is completely different for and for a lot of the reasons that you're talking about, because profit, when it comes to corporate, anything corporate is the end goal, it's not people, and that becomes the real issue.
Speaker 1:And it's so evident too when you talk about the social justice. Like they had the opportunity to decriminalize, and I know you talked about in your book as well that oftentimes decrim can mean you can like lose your product or get a ticket, but there are some models out there where it just means nothing happens, like you, it's just decriminalized. You just go about your life. Yeah, you can't go to a store and buy it, but you could maybe grow a plant in your backyard or you could get some off a friend who does, or something like that. And nobody is having their life destroyed by having a criminal charge for, like you said, a relatively benign plant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know you're absolutely right and a lot of people are figuring that out. I haven't monitored it much in the last couple of years, but I know up to about two years ago we were seeing a pretty dramatic shift in people moving away from the corporate cannabis to supporting the local craft growers. So people are figuring this out.
Speaker 1:Right, and because you also mentioned 16,000 arrests and these import-export charges. I mean, if you get an import-export charge, that's a federal charge. You are in huge trouble with that and that is definitely going to affect you for the rest of your life and that's crazy. And this is happening 2019 that was like that's after legalization, and to think that these things are still happening, it's kind of it's kind of outrageous in a lot of ways. But now the title of your book, buzz kill, suggests that something's been lost in the process of legalization. What do you think's been lost and who's been most affected?
Speaker 2: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 think this way as well the first casualty was the ability to trust the Liberal Party in terms of its policy on cannabis legalization. They promised us a law-abiding industry that would be regulated to produce product that we could trust. What we got was a disinformation campaign that demonized the unlicensed trade and deified the licensed trade, and the story we got is that the unlicensed cannabis trade was all these dangerous organized crime entities, and our children were buying their cannabis from these dangerous criminals. And not just cannabis, but they will sell other dangerous drugs to our children and they will get them to do get involved in other crimes they love. One of their favorite expressions was gun runners. Our kids were all going to be turned into gun runners.
Speaker 2:I saw that so many times and you know from a strategic point of view so many times, and you know from a strategic point of view, it's a brilliant strategy to leverage parental protectiveness of their children in order to traffic legalization. To us it's earmongering. Yes, exactly. The problem with it is it's not true. It's not supported by the academic research. What the academic research shows is that most people who buy cannabis aren't buying it from these shadowy figures and poorly lit parking lots in the dead of night. They're buying it from their friends and they're buying it from family members and other kinds of social contacts. And even the people who were selling cannabis illegally, the very great majority of them were not selling any other kinds of drugs and the only kind of crime that they had any involvement in whatsoever was selling cannabis. That was it.
Speaker 2:Now, yes, there were a few bad actors, as there always are, and often it's the bad actors that get the media attention. So I think there were a few incidents that sort of supported the government's narrative, but by and large, these were not the dangerous people that we were told about. And the other thing, even the government's own intel did not support this organized crime narrative. There was a 2016 Justice Department report that looked at all the cultivation cases tried by the government and only 5% of them had any connection to organized crime at all. And I went through, year after year after year of the annual reports from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada and Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, and they all reported the same thing that involvement of organized crime in the drug trade was pretty much restricted to cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine, and its involvement in cannabis was negligible.
Speaker 2:So what did we get from this legal industry? Well, it wasn't a law-abiding one. There's numerous incidents of corporate crime, even collaboration with the illegal trade. It was supposed to replace, with relatively little consequences from government regulators or the criminal justice system. Now, one of the big advantages of legalization is that we have a surveillance system in place where Health Canada conducts inspections of all licensed cannabis producers in the country, and this has been happening since 2015. And since then, health Canada has logged 3,853 regulatory violations, and 1,451 of them met the criteria for major or critical violations. So so much for law abiding. So much for the Liberal Party Credibility on this.
Speaker 2:The second casualty is the investors. With their unbridled passion for cannabis, some of them became, unfortunately, naive sitting ducks, and the early licensees, the corporate executives, who were mostly a bunch of greedy con men, never made really any money selling cannabis. Where they made their money was from conning naive investors. And the last tally I saw on this was an analysis done by a Toronto law firm which has estimated that investors in the cannabis industry have lost $131 billion, and I want to emphasize that that's a B for billion.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2: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 them from securities regulators protection for them from securities regulators. So, you know, these people were left with debt and despair as our government regulators seem to almost go into kind of a coma with this industry. And you know, there's one of the expressions I've used in lots of cases is that our regulators 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:And it's funny you mentioned that because I know you talked a lot in your book about how the people who are running these, these corporate cannabis companies you know they'd be closing down giant greenhouses they just built and laying off people and investors were losing money, but somehow the C-suite executives still made their bonuses, and that doesn't sit right at all with anybody. But you also and I'm really glad you also touched on the people selling weed, on the illegal trade, because what you talk about and what the research suggests is what I've seen in my own personal life, you know, through years of being around cannabis is that usually you went to somebody's house and you pick some up and maybe they might sell mushrooms or something, but they that's usually all they did. You'd shoot the ship for a little bit and you'd go home and they'd be like, oh great, I just made 50 bucks and they would use it on grocery money or something like that.
Speaker 1:Like the the, the notion that it was mostly organized crime does seem incorrect. I mean, those are the stories that make the news, because it's not exciting to have, like you know, bill from the house down the street got busted with, you know, 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 like really shady practices where they're, you know, selling weed in the on the market that they were using pesticides that weren't allowed or like things like that, and so that really does put into some doubt around the safety of some of the legal weed. I mean, you expect to have the regulatory folks have the teeth necessary to sort of protect the public, but it doesn't seem like that's the way things are playing out. I don't know if the industry has improved since you've written this book. Maybe you can comment on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, it's a good question and the short answer is no, and I've just recently done some analysis on that and, uh, the, the, because we've been at this with companies legally producing cannabis. We've been at it for a decade now, since, you know, if you conclude the, the period of pre-recreational to include the therapeutic medical, we've been at this a good decade and actually a bit more than a decade, and I just I don't have the numbers at hand, but the take-home message is the improvement has been minimal and we should have seen a lot more over the period of a decade.
Speaker 1:Well, that's disappointing to hear.
Speaker 2:And it was for me too. I was really hoping to see at least some good news that things were improving, but it's pretty small the amount of people.
Speaker 1:So, in that regard, then, what does that mean for the consumer who's going into a store to buy cannabis if we know that a lot of the product that could potentially be sold is not necessarily safe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I know, the solution of a friend of mine is he just grows his own in his backyard and he knows everything that goes in the ground.
Speaker 2:He knows everything that happens during the plant's growing cycle, knows everything that happens during the plant's growing cycle, and I think and it's surprising that, I mean maybe it's just too much of a hassle for most people that they don't want to do it, but that's the safest way. I mean, our government just has not. I mean, growing cannabis on a large scale is very difficult, and so you have to at least acknowledge that, and that's why I'm, you know, inclined to supporting lower craft growers. It's just more manageable from an agricultural perspective. So I think that's why we need to get away from these big corporations. We need to focus on small craft and still regulate, you know, very tough. I mean, there are companies using illegal pesticides on products that are potentially very dangerous, and when you think there are people who are using cannabis medicinally, who are compromised in terms of their immune system, and we're feeding them poisons in this cannabis and these companies get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's a real deterrent. When I spoke to a committee of the Senate on this, I talked about that and I said you know, why is this not considered the poisoning of people seeking medicine for cancer or compromised immune system? And you've got a company deliberately feeding them poison. I said senators, why is this not a serious crime?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There was no answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, there was no answer. Yeah, and I mean you're talking. You're speaking my language in a lot of ways, because I know a ton of people that grow their own cannabis. I'm one of them and that's also the reason why I like to make my own edibles as well, because I know exactly what's going into them and I have spoken to a lot of edibles makers through this particular podcast and I like what they're doing, because they are usually more on the craft side than the corporate side and they put a little more thought and care and attention into what they're doing than you're going to get when it's all about how cheaply can I produce this product so I can maximize my profit, and that's a very different way of looking at selling a product on the cannabis market. But I mean, a lot of people also believe that legalization would bring a more just and equitable cannabis market, and do you really? Do you feel like we've achieved that? In any case?
Speaker 2:Well, it's more bad news, I'm afraid. I don't think legalization of cannabis in Canada was ever about justice and equity. I think there were a lot of people who, in a sense, were conned by a very expertly developed public relations campaign and the thinking that that's what this was all about. But you know, those of us who have been around the block a few times with our other legal drug industries, we had a pretty strong suspicion of how this was going to play out. So I don't think it was really corporations derailing anything. I think you know they just did what corporations do. And I think from day one legalization was used as a kind of Ponzi scheme in a way for making a lot of money for a very small group of elites and everybody else sort of got shafted and the whole thing was really, I think, very much over romanticized.
Speaker 1:Right Now, the war on drugs disproportionately affected marginalized communities, as we well know. Do you think legalization has helped repair these harms, or is it just created new inequities?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, one of the ideas that I think came up that was sort of an interesting one is that, yeah, that you know the war on drugs did very negatively affect these marginalized communities and there should be some kind of reparations, and I certainly agree with that in principle. One of the ideas that really gained prominence was that if you've got people who have been hurt by having a drug conviction, specifically a cannabis conviction, that maybe we give them preferred, easier access to a cannabis retail license, and I think this was taken on very enthusiastically. I think it was in Oakland, california, where that became a pretty major happening. But we heard a lot of talk about this in Canada too, and I think you know that's okay if that's what the person wants. But I, the more I thought about it, you know, I thought, well, if someone was had a pot charge they got busted 10 years ago or even a year ago why would we assume that that is how they want to have some reparation, to be given a cannabis retail license?
Speaker 2:I mean, there are people, obviously, who want that, but why would we assume that would make everybody happy? Why would you only have one option, that one as a form of reparation? I mean, maybe the person would really like some help establishing a software company or beginning a carpentry apprenticeship, or maybe they could use some free legal assistance or help with affordable housing, food security, daycare. You know all the issues that are so potentially and probably so much more important to these marginalized communities than getting some help with a retail license for cannabis. So you know, right from the beginning I was saying no, you know we need to offer a broad range of reparations. But even that was still sabotaged by big cannabis. I don't remember some details now off the top of my head, but I think in the state of New York a lot of these attempts to give cannabis retail licenses to people, it got sabotaged by big cannabis.
Speaker 2:So, you know, and I haven't seen anything 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 perfect example. You know the intent was good, but I think the execution was compromised by narrow thinking.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's interesting you mentioned that mentioned about the cannabis licenses in particular, because in many jurisdictions in Canada there's so many retail licenses that it's almost impossible to make money at the retail level now. So making reparations in that way is not that not as can be very unattractive. Actually, even if you're a cannabis lover, there's a lot of different ways you could be in the cannabis industry without going the retail angle. But, like you said, why are we assuming that they even want to get into the cannabis space to earn a living, or there's lots of different ways that it can be approached, and so I really like that. But also, I mean they did I don't know if they've changed it, but they offered people to get they could get pardons on their past criminal convictions for cannabis, and as far as I know, that still costs quite a bit of money to do. And why they didn't just expunge the records, Like if they really wanted to help people overcome the challenges, then why wouldn't they just expunge records instead of making people have to apply for a pardon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a really good question. You know and I just keep going back that to my my one of my main points and it's one of the main points of the book is this was never about social justice Right At any point. That was part of the sell, but it wasn't really what was motivating all this.
Speaker 1:Right. So it was basically corporate interests at the expense of social justice and the public health.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know there's a story that is a fascinating one that I'll tell that relates to this. There was a licensed producer in Winnipeg named Bonify, and what happened with them is they had over promised their ability to produce and therefore their ability sell, and therefore the impact on stock values to their investors, and they fell terribly short of the yield they would need to fulfill those promises of revenue and stock values. So what they decided to do was that they went out and bought 200 kilograms of cannabis from an illegal source and then sold it to retail outlets in Saskatchewan. Now there were some employees, and I talked to one of them on the phone. We had a long, absolutely fascinating discussion about this, about this, and so he sort of gave me a lot of the stuff in the background that you know Health Canada never wrote anything about. But anyway, some employees fearing their own, you know, culpability I mean they were unloading the illegal cannabis and loading it on different trucks, and so they said you know what, we're committing a serious federal crime here. So they you know they went to management and said look, you know we're not comfortable with this. Management said you know what, just mind your own business and do your job, let us do the thinking.
Speaker 2:So, unhappy with that, the employees went to the board of directors and the Board of Directors, somewhat reluctantly, said okay, yeah, we'll look into it. And I think it was the guy I talked to in the phone. He never told me, but I think he's the one who decided to call Health Canada. So Health Canada came, did its inspection, found all kinds of regulatory violations, and in this whole process the company did admit, yes, we did buy some illegal cannabis from what it called a broker, and some of the execs were fired. I think one board member was suspended. The company's license was suspended for less than a year and the company actually eventually went bankrupt, which meant all these employees, including the conscientious ones, lost their jobs. Now, margaret, imagine that you and I pool our funds and we go out and we buy 200 kilograms of illegal cannabis and we try to sell it and we get caught. You and I are almost certainly going to prison. We are going to prison and the Cannabis Act provides for that much cannabis. It provides a maximum of 14 years in prison.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow exactly of 14 years in prison. Yeah, wow, exactly. But with Bonifay, no one went to prison, no one went to court, no one was even charged. That's crazy, it is. And now, at the same time that I was researching this Bonifay case, I just, totally by accident, I just stumbled upon another case that was happening in Winnipeg at the same time, involving an Aboriginal man who had been arrested for possession of not 200 kilograms of cannabis but 85 grams, and he was also found to be in possession of some equipment that could be used in the further distribution of this cannabis. And in sentencing him, the judge did not call him a broker. The judge called him a drug dealer and sentenced him to 10 months in prison.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's the language. The language you point out is so interesting and kind of infuriating too, because in that first case, with the Bonafide employees, if anybody was going to end up seeing jail time it would have been those, those employees that were actually the ones handling the cannabis and loading the trucks, unloading the trucks, and then again the corporate execs, the C-suite people, just you know, I guess somebody got fired, but you'll just go find another job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, another six figure salary job and you can go on vacation for a few months High fives over cocktails in the Bahamas, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's outrageous. Now you mentioned this Indigenous individual who was sentenced to 10 months. How has the Indigenous community been impacted by corporate cannabis, Because I find that that's sort of an interesting area as well, because there's a lot of dispensaries that you can go to on reserves that are sort of outside of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a really good question and it's one of my main answer is going to be I don't know. I mean I understand it the same as you that the. I mean it seems like the Native community has just sort of taken upon itself and said well, you know, you're not going to let us into this system, so we'll do it ourselves. And I don't know to what extent they've been the police have sort of stood down and just let them do it. I have to admit I haven't followed that issue very well, so I don't know even what the Native communities think, if they're happy to do it themselves or would they really like to be involved in other ways of doing it legally and, you know, within the bounds of the law, I don't know. I mean, I think it'd be a great podcast to invite a couple of them in and get their opinions, rather than me sort of guessing and imposing.
Speaker 1:It is interesting because I do know lots of people that travel to reserves to purchase their cannabis because they like the bud tenders there and it probably keeps the money in the community. But I should see if I can find somebody to come on the podcast to talk about that more specifically. Now, along those same lines, craft cannabis producers and small businesses struggle to compete with these huge corporations because they just don't have the same economies of scale. Are there any policies that you think that could help level out the playing field?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I probably have a bit of a hard-nosed attitude on this, but my approach to it would be to just get rid of the corporations. You know, I think they tend to attract a lot of bad actors. They're very difficult to manage. The politicians and the regulators are too easily seduced into letting the corporations get away with far too much. So you know, I would be inclined to focus on small craft growers and just have it exclusively like that. And you know, I remember there was a CEO from one of the big producers who was talking a little bit about the craft growers gaining market share and he referred to them as ankle biters, which it just captures the attitude. You know the condescension so perfectly.
Speaker 2:But you know, in Europe, I mean, there's a model of cannabis social clubs right that are like co-ops and you pay a membership, they grow the cannabis, you come and get your supply when you want it and there's no attempt at market expansion. It's not like we have to. You know, there's this whole thing of let's get everybody to try cannabis. People who want it come and get it. But you know we're not going to do this big public promotion campaign. So you know there's that model, you know in the book I talk about a not-for-profit crown corporation that could have been set up. I think that would have been interesting to try and I hope that somewhere in the world somebody does give it a try and then you know, so really I would. Again, it's an issue that I, on which I would defer to the craft growers to get into some specifics too. Another great podcast, margaret.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you mentioned in your book you talk quite a bit about the small craft growers and you reference the CEO I guess I don't know if they call themselves CEOs or not, but the head of a particular craft grow company that basically came out and said, yeah, we had some powdery mildew or something like that on our crop and so we had to, like, destroy it and we couldn't sell it. And that kind of integrity I think you're more likely to see in the smaller spaces, because they really care about what they're doing, and that would be the kind of company that I want to buy from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the kind of company somebody would want to buy from. Yeah, somebody would want to invest in as well. I think there's that trust there. Yeah, I mean, it's almost, almost kind of like a religion, you know, and and I with the passion, and I say that as a, as a positive thing, whereas you know, I think with the corporations, it's the religion is is all about money, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely I like and I find the social clubs pretty interesting as well. I mean, I've I've been to germany. I was in germany last year just as they legalized, but they had nothing set up yet. The social clubs weren't really. They weren't set up because it legalized in april 1st and that's when I was there. But I do, I do find that sort of attractive as well because there's sort of a community component around it as well and people talk and then you can find out about all kinds of things, I guess, if you're talking directly to the people who are growing and stuff as well. So I find that to be an interesting model. So, in your opinion, would more like eliminating like super large corporations and maybe social clubs and things like that? Would that be more aligned with a public health oriented cannabis model?
Speaker 2:It could be. Yeah, I mean it should be. I mean I think you still have to regulate it. I mean there's still could be people who are going to, you know, always push the margins a bit right, even among small craft growers. But, generally speaking, I would have a lot more confidence in the smaller craft growers than I would in the large corporate sectors.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's really, and it's not just about you know, following the law and that it has direct implications for quality of the product, for people who are very passionate about the product, and there's a lot of factors involved in that. I mean, as I said, it's not easy to grow cannabis in large volumes. It's an agricultural nightmare that so many things can go wrong and you know, this is why we saw that these execs, you know they were incentivized to build the biggest and largest greenhouses in the world and most of them ended up sitting mostly empty. And I remember seeing an astounding thing that was reported in Marijuana Business Daily Between 2018 and 2020, the cannabis industry in Canada destroyed more cannabis than it sold. I mean, think about that.
Speaker 1:That's wild. They destroyed more than they sold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they destroyed more than they sold and one company was destroying so much cannabis that normally these companies would outsource the incineration of it. One company actually bought its own incinerator to have in-house. That's how it was cheaper to do it that way than to outsource the amount that they had to incinerate. Now, the other thing that was interesting is that, because of the way the laws were written and the regulations, cannabis company legal cannabis companies could not hire people who had a cannabis conviction. Now, there was a lot of expertise out there from the days of the illegal growing operations, right, people over the years had learned how to grow larger crops without lots of problems, but the companies couldn't hire them because a lot of them had actually been charged at one point or another. So that was another thing that happened.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that made that, I think, had some implications was that companies, because they misled their shareholders, made these promises about production yields that they couldn't keep. You know, like the Bonafide story, they had to start purchasing from the illegal trade 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 recent Health Canada report, january of this year, and what Health Canada did is it collected 50 samples from the legal trade, 50 samples from the illegal trade and did some comparisons. And the first thing they found was that on the legal cannabis, the level of THC on the labels was exaggerated beyond the true values that showed in the testing and, in some cases, grossly exaggerated. And what's happening there is that the testing labs where the companies send their cannabis to be tested, they are under pressure constantly to falsify the results of the tests and to give the grower, the producer, thc levels that the company wants and not what the tests reflect. And if the testing lab doesn't comply with this, they don't get repeat business.
Speaker 2:So, this is another level of corruption. Now, the other thing that this report from Health Canada showed that is also very interesting is they found in both legal and illegal samples lots of contamination. So the legal product was less likely to be contaminated with mycotoxins, which is like fungus, or pesticides or microbial contaminants, and also for some heavy metals, particularly arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and barium, and arsenic was actually quite high in some samples, that's, in the illegal. But the legal product was more likely to contain and exceed safe limits for heavy metals such as copper, nickel, molybdenum, chromium and vanadium. So that's a problem and this is probably an issue that a lot of your audience probably understands better possibly far better than I do. But plants vary in their potential to absorb heavy metals and it turns out that cannabis, as a plant, is what's called a hyper accumulator and that means that it more readily absorbs heavy metals than many other plants like 100 to 1000 times more readily.
Speaker 2:I didn't know, that Cannabis is particularly at risk for absorbing heavy metals. So the obvious message for the home grower is you damn well better know where your soil comes from and what's in it.
Speaker 1:Right, that's really interesting because I do know a lot of home growers that don't do soil growing at all. They use other mediums. But that's a really interesting point about the hyperaccumulation, because I was totally unaware that that was a thing. With regards to the cannabis plant, I did also see, I think, a synopsis of that Health Canada report. I do remember at one point one of the licensed producers was talking about dynamic versus static pricing in the cannabis market, and I think that was the idea that some of the LPs would have a product go to the market and they would get it tested and then they would use that same, that same THC percentage on every label for the rest of the life of that product, versus others that were testing each batch.
Speaker 1:I don't know how they got around doing like doing the static testing, how they were able to actually do that, but I worked in a dispensary for a couple of years in 2020. And I saw that myself. I saw products that every single time we would get in a new batch, it was always the exact same percentage and then others always fluctuated. But the problem with a lot of that stuff too, is that there's still a lot of consumers out there that equate high THC with I don't know quality, or they just think it's better. And so there is of course the pressure from the LPs to also produce something that's, like you know, as high as the percentages they can possibly get, and so that just contributes to all of what you were just talking about. But one thing I am curious about is do you know the percentage of craft growers on the market in Canada versus corporate Like is there? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 2:I don't know and I don't think I ever even looked into that, right? Oh no, sorry, can't help you with that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just curious. I thought maybe you might know, but it would probably take. I mean, there's so many cannabis companies out there now with all their brands and sub-brands, it's hard to keep track of everything.
Speaker 2:I think there's 800 licensed growers now in Canada.
Speaker 1:Is there really? That's huge. Yeah, that's a lot of competition. Now. Legal cannabis was supposed to eliminate the legacy market, as I like to call it. In your opinion, has that succeeded? I certainly have my own opinion, but I would love to hear yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the last I saw was that the unlicensed market has been reduced by about 50%. Okay, which is not bad, I guess. I think most people imagined that it would be higher and faster than that. But you know, we have to sort of be realistic. I mean, after a century, after more than a century, we still have illegal tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical products. So you know, I think it's probably unrealistic to think that we'll ever completely eliminate the black market. And if the legal market doesn't get its act together, that's going to help it survive longer. I mean, if people knew that they were getting a guaranteed safer product by buying from the legal industry, that would help a lot. But that's not what's happening.
Speaker 1:And not only a safer product but a good quality product, because a lot of people don't want to give up that quality. It's like anything. I mean, you can go out and buy your corporate beer. You can buy a really nice craft beer from the store now, and a lot of people are opting for the craft beers because they're more interesting and it's yeah. So I tend to agree with that. I think some of the regulations they have in place, but maybe that's also like a public health thing. 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 way outside of that and that makes it way too expensive to buy from the legal market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that that's unfortunate, because I mean from a public, and it's a tricky thing from a public health perspective, because in one way, from a public health perspective, it's way better to be using edibles than combustion much safer, right.
Speaker 2:So that's a good protection.
Speaker 2:I think where things went awry with the edibles was that they started being made as candy, and so the problem that happened and we knew this as early as 2014 in Colorado that people are taking them home and they're not being careful and they're leaving them out and their kids come along don't know and they just think it's candy and they eat it and all of a sudden you've got a small child in respiratory distress and you're taking them to the hospital in the middle of the night, and there was clear data that that was becoming a big problem in Colorado as early as 2014.
Speaker 2:And there's a researcher in Ottawa, adam Myron, who he's shown the exact same thing is happening in Canada. We've had a big increase in child admissions to hospital and the ER from unsupervised consumption of cannabis candy. So edible is a good thing. It's in the form of a confection. I think that's the reason why they're restricted to very low levels to prevent a really serious overdose in a child. It's unfortunate that we have to do that, but you know there's, you know what's that old thing from grade school right?
Speaker 1:There's always people who ruin it for the rest of us. Yeah, that's so true, these people who ruin it for the rest of us. Yeah, that's so true Because obviously I'm a parent. My kids are older now, but I never wanted my kids getting into my stash. That stuff is for me. So you lock it up, you keep it away, because no parent wants to go through that of seeing their kid and like I mean, I've overdosed on edibles before and it is not a fun time. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if you're just a little kid. So that is unfortunate, because that's one of those areas where the illicit market will probably continue to thrive, just because of the fact that it can't compete with like the legal market, can't compete with those limited potencies of the edibles that you find on the legal market. But what do you do Now? If you could rewrite Canada's cannabis laws from scratch.
Speaker 2:What are the top three changes that you would make? Yeah, I hate that question, Not because it's a bad question. It's a great question and it's probably one of the best questions that could be asked. I hate it because I don't have a great answer to it. That's going to be really difficult because the industry now has become so entrenched, just like alcohol, tobacco and pharma. I think now we're in a mode where we can try to make small adjustments to improve things over time.
Speaker 2:But you know, I want to get at the important part of your question so let's just reframe it a bit which is you know, if another country was where Canada was six years ago, how would we advise them to write their laws? And I think Germany and Malta are a couple of examples that are at least thinking that through carefully. It's not entirely clear yet where they're going to land, but it looks promising. It looks like they're going to do a lot better than Canada did and a lot better than what happened in the US at the state level. So this would be my advice the US at the state level. So this would be my advice First of all, use a hybrid model that involves decriminalization first, like immediately, If you haven't already done that, do it yesterday and then work on non-commercial legalization.
Speaker 2:So no corporations, just small local craft growers and nonprofits with no market expansion activities. And I would then say, make product quality a priority, with meaningful penalties for deliberate or reckless regulatory violations. Now, that doesn't mean that if something kind of unavoidable happens in your production that you know, you throw the book at them. But I mean, for companies that are repeatedly reckless, A flagrant yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there should be very meaningful penalties for that, quite possibly including forfeiture of the license, and we've had a few of those in Canada. I think there's four licenses that have been forfeited to date, but it could have been a lot larger and in my opinion, it should have been a lot larger. The other thing I would do and this is probably a controversial one for some people, but I'd be willing to give it a chance is to look into bringing the unlicensed producers into the legal system. Give them the opportunity to come in, because they bring a lot of expertise. Now there's some understandings that have to be in place. It's not like the Wild West anymore. There are laws and there are regulations 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 those provisos, I would be willing to give that a try.
Speaker 1:And the final thing I guess is just, the whole thing would be under public health control.
Speaker 2: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 folks in charge, right.
Speaker 1:Those are all excellent suggestions, actually, and even the last one where you suggest might be a little controversial. I mean, the listeners of Bite Me. Like I said, there's a lot of growers out there that are listening, and there are many people who would probably love to have the chance to enter the legal market or be able to do it legally, and they it's just not possible right now. It's just so expensive to get into that whole business yeah, right, and you know I remember.
Speaker 2:Another uh story is, I think it was the year previous to legalization I was invited to sit on a panel in a meeting organized by the magazine the Economist. They put together a session on cannabis legalization. It was held in Toronto. So here I am I'm part of this panel, up on a stage in front of this enormous ballroom of several hundred people, I think, most of whom were there to figure out how they could get into the investment in the cannabis industry.
Speaker 2:And this is, you know, a year before legalization. And I was warning them about all this stuff, you know, and they looked at me like I was a skunk at a picnic, through these just looks of outright alarm. As I talked about all this, and after the whole thing, one of the other panelists came up to me who at that time was a CEO of one of Canada's major cannabis growers, and he came up to me and he said you know, my background is in the pharmaceutical industry and everything you're saying about the pharmaceutical industry is right, you got that right, but we're going to be better doing it in cannabis. And I think it was about two years after that. His company was in big trouble and he was fired.
Speaker 1:Well, so much for doing things differently, I guess, but the leopard can't change its spots. Now, I guess the one question I would have to sort of wrap things up is where does this leave consumers, Like as someone who consumes cannabis? Yes, I make my own edibles, I do a little growing too, but I do like to visit my dispensary and pick up some things from time to time, and it's nice to be able to have that luxury, I guess because there's a lot of people that don't. But for someone who's going into a dispensary, what, what, where does that leave us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's a good question and it's a tricky one. There's there's not an easy answer, but the only thing I can suggest really is know your growers know where your cannabis is coming from. Now, these surveillance systems that Health Canada has in place, they publish it all on their website. All the information is there so you can go on and you can see which companies are getting multiple infractions for problems with their product, and so you can see it. And then there's a recalls database that Health Canada maintains for all consumer products, and they started adding cannabis, I think, in 2014. So, you know, I went through all that recently and, as of December 31st, there were 101 recalls.
Speaker 1:December 31st of what year?
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, of 2024. That's still a lot. Yeah, 101 recalls, and some of them are enormous recalls too. So you know. But again, at least in those cases they name the companies so you can see who the repeat offenders are and you can also, if you have a particular grower in mind, you can see that. You know, hey, great they're. They haven't been cited, they're great. Now, what I think would be a really valuable guide for somebody to produce it won't be me, but I think it would be really useful for cannabis consumers is to sort of put out an annual report where it sort of rates all the growers from zero infractions to 45 infractions. Right, I mean, if somebody could put out an annual report like that, people might be willing to pay money for that information.
Speaker 1:No, those are good suggestions and that information you can get from Health Canada.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:All the stuff you were talking about, because in Canada growers are, like the licensed producers, required to have certificates of analysis.
Speaker 2:Yes, they analysis. Yes, they are yes, and that's what often gets them into trouble is they have a product in-house that does not have a certificate of analysis, which almost certainly means it came from the black market.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, so do your research.
Speaker 1:essentially, and if you're looking for a specific grower that you like in in your favorite store, then you can always look them up and ensure that they don't have any infractions held against them. You can buy with confidence. Okay, well, that's something positive. At least we can take away from that. Yeah, now just to wrap up, mike, because I had so many other, so many more questions prepared, but we just didn't ran out of time and there is so much in this book. It's fantastic and I recommend anybody who's interested in this topic to dig into it, because there's a lot more in this book than we were even able to touch on today. But what is one thing that you hope listeners take away from this interview, from your book?
Speaker 2:Right. Well, I guess the main thing is a point I wanted to make is there's nothing unique or new about cannabis legalization. It's not our first legal recreational drug industry and it won't be our last. We know there's legal psychedelics in motion that's coming, and I would also suggest that over the next decade we are going to see an unprecedented amount of international drug policy reform, and the question is this what is going to drive it? Will it be public health protection and social justice, or is it going to be more permissively regulated commercialization? So hopefully we can learn from cannabis legalization to do better in the legalization campaigns that are yet to come. And Buzzkill, I wrote it that it has those lessons and I just hope that every country that's in the process of legalizing will take the time to read it, because they'll find it enormously helpful.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure, Margaret. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Friends, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. There was a lot to digest in that episode, so you'll find the link to Mike's book and detailed show notes at bitemepodcastcom and on your podcast app. And now I ask you what was your biggest takeaway from today's episode? I would love to hear your thoughts. You can share them with me or join the Bite Me Cannabis Club to dive deeper. And until next time, my friends, stay high.
