What have we learned from one year of cannabis legalization?

Market stabilization is years away, but with every province regulating cannabis in its own way, we’ll start to discover what works and what doesn’t
Policy Options (Canada)
Monday, December 16, 2019

canada cannabis flagThe first year of legal cannabis sales in Canada did not go smoothly. To be fair, introducing a federally regulated legal supply chain that operates across 13 different retail systems for a product that has been illegal for almost 100 years is an extremely complex undertaking. But the sky hasn’t fallen. And other countries, including Luxembourg and New Zealand, are looking at Canada to inform their own legalization approaches. We definitely have lessons to share, and we might even have got a few things right, including restricting advertising, promoting lower-THC products, and investing in data collection and research. (See also: Transform: Cannabis legalisation in Canada – One year on)