NADIA GUO
<Staff Writer>
Hola. I’m writing this article poolside from a resort in Cabo San Lucas, where the weather is fabulous and the sea is turquoise-clean. Nice, white American retirees have exerted enough influence over the area that cartel violence hasn’t made an obvious mark here. Yet. I say “obvious” because it’s likely the cartels have more money invested in these resorts than most normal people, so they’re probably still lurking quietly in the background somewhere. Regardless, a Wal-Mart has opened up on the outskirts of town, happily putting all the small grocers out of business, and McDonalds is slowly distributing type-2 diabetes to residents and tourists alike, so you could say people lead a fairly comfortable life here.
Yet. A Wal-Mart has opened up on the outskirts of town, happily putting all the small grocers out of business, and McDonalds is slowly distributing type-2 diabetes to the town’s residents.
A decade ago on a family vacation to Florida my mother was swindled into a timeshare deal. Now she has too many vacation days to know what to do with, and this is why you can find me in this cultureless hellhole full of bros, hos, and middle-aged lobsters. I can understand why old, rich Americans and Canadians would want to retire here, though, because not only are the beaches totally kickass, but we’ve discovered that if you are interested, you could also buy pretty much any prescription drug you want without a prescription. I suppose they’re just “drugs” in that case. Advertisements for Ambien, Viagra, and Vicodin are plastered over every window. It wasn’t like this in Mexico City or Xalapa, where I travelled earlier this summer, but one local told us the municipal police have “struck a deal” with the pharmacists. Thank god for the persuasive pull of dólares Americanos, I suppose.
But this article is about weed, not benzos or aphrodisiacs. Corporate bud has come to Canada and you should know what to expect out of marijuana in the next few years.
This summer I worked under the mentorship of Ron Marzel at Marzel Law, who represents a handful of clients soon to become the head honchos of legal marijuana in Canada. Remember that interview I wrote for Obiter back when I first started law school on how awesome Alan Young is? Well, one thing led to another, and I was referred to Ron. He represents several big players in the pot industry, including one of the largest compassion clubs in Canada.
It’s been a busy summer. Over the past few months, I made my first (and second, and third) semi-legal purchases of prime quality bud, smoked at business meetings, got chastised by serious connoisseurs for calling marijuana “weed” (“It’s not a weed. It’s a beautiful plant with potentially life-saving properties”), was given an idea of just how highly and jealously pot growers covet their strains, and also learned a great deal about the quickly changing landscape of marijuana policy.
On June 19th, the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (“MMPR”) came into force to little fanfare from the general population. More attention was given to Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he wanted to legalize cannabis, and his subsequent “gutsy” declaration that he did, in fact, smoke weed, and, not only did he inhale, but he – gasp – “sometimes” even got a “buzz”. Ignoring that Trudeau’s recent support to legalize is (unshockingly, because come on, he is a politician after all) hypocritical given how he had once voted in favour of imposing mandatory minimum sentences for cannabis offences, we can focus on how legalizing marijuana will certainly facilitate the large-scale commercialization of a crop that is currently a heavily prohibited substance in most jurisdictions.
But, legalized or not, many are unaware that the promulgation of the MMPR has already swung the doors wide open to the production of marijuana on an industrial level. Individual patients with a constitutional right to use cannabis for medical purposes (thanks, R v Parker!) will no longer be able to grow for themselves as they did under the repealed program, but licensed producers will be able to sell directly to patients without requiring pre-authorization from Health Canada. Patients will get the equivalent of a prescription from a health care practitioner that they can then take to licensed producers to buy pot. They are not actually called “prescriptions”, however, since this would require cannabis to be recognized as a drug under the Food and Drugs Act, which it currently is not due to “lack of conclusive evidence of the therapeutic benefits of marijuana”. This is so even though a court has declared that to deny certain patients’ access to cannabis is a breach of their s 7 rights, go figure.
Unfortunately, you won’t be seeing Purple Kush and White Shark on your Shoppers Drug Mart’s shelves in the next few months. We did come quite close to pharmacists being authorized to dispense in the first draft of the regulations, until they complained that this would put them “at an increased risk of being robbed”, or some crap like that. This is a particularly lousy excuse, considering pharmacists stock their shelves with expensive and highly addictive narcotics like oxycodone and other opiates without complaint. Give me a break. No pothead is going to hold up a store for some bud. But opiate addicts hold up pharmacies all the time for hillbilly heroin. However, I’ve long given up on logic or rationality dictating any policy decisions concerning drugs in this society, so whatever.
There are other workings going on in the background of the MMPR that are certainly going to create some moderate waves in the pot scene in Canada and abroad. For one, the MMPR is – sort of – in direct contravention of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, which stipulates that any production of cannabis is to be treated in the same way as production of the opium poppy (ha!), and thus must be delivered to and distributed by a centralized government agency. The Single Convention was a UN treaty Canada entered into as part of the now laughable effort to fight “the war on drugs”, and is overseen by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). Apparently, the United Nations were overly optimistic when it came to naming this convention, for this “single” convention was followed by two more international conventions on narcotics in 1972 and 1988.
Anyway, the import provisions were exciting news for our clients and their investors alike. You see, the Single Convention provides ample exceptions for the production and trade of narcotics for medical and scientific purposes. So like any good with a healthy demand in the first world, we can outsource its manufacture to some developing country in the global south! We’ll get them to grow our weed, for like, two dollars an hour! Yay, globalization. (Hey, don’t give me that look. Why don’t you think long and hard about where your iPhone came from, and then come back to me? Welcome to capitalism, baby.) The fact that Uruguay was the first country to fully legalize the production, sale, and distribution of marijuana for recreational use (a huge middle finger to the INCB) was further excellent news for us.
Forget Justin Trudeau, politicians, the INCB. Once marijuana becomes legitimized and commercialized on a national level – where it’s no longer your neighbourhood stoner with the grow-op in his basement, but Purdue University with its 40-acre production factory overseas – it won’t matter that it’s restricted to medical use. There’s enough support in the population for decriminalization and legalization. This, coupled with the inevitable corporate cannabis lobbying that is sure to come, means that the doors to the rest of the market will eventually be forced open. Let’s face it – corporations are bigger and badder than the state, and this is one of those rare instances where I find myself in support of the corporate interest. For one, there will be lots of money to fund those clinical trials Health Canada needs to authorize cannabis to be treated like any other marketed drug under the FDA, be they objective or not. “Everybody must get stoned!” will be the chant in Parliament.
It’s a great time to make some good money in this industry. Growers who want to become licensed under the MMPR are going to need a lot of capital to meet regulatory compliance thanks to all the security and sanitation requirements. This in turn will mean a lot of money for security consultants, architects, engineers, electricians, quality assurance specialists, lab technicians, and most of all, legal counsel who are masochistic enough to actually read the legislation. In fact, legal advice in this field is in such demand right now that Ron tried to persuade me to ditch law school for good to continue working with him. Or you know, at least defer for a year, which Osgoode allows students to do. “You want to be a starving criminal lawyer forever?” was his pitch.
I had to turn him down in the end, despite how badly I wanted to not be a poor student anymore, and despite how cool it was that the guys who invested and ran Leafly, the awesomest and most well-designed weed app, ever, were looking to invest in our clients.
As much as I love weed, this whole game was too boringly corporate for me. These clients weren’t underdog enough for me, and this was all about playing within the rules, not challenging them – a position I’m much better suited to. I was too young to start selling out just yet. I decided to go back to school to learn how to defend murderers and gangsters.
That being said, Osgoode: if you want the dough, you might want to start thinking about chasing down those pipe dreams.