Latest / Kvetch & Release / 610 CKTB | Life After Flower: Rise of the Edible

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610 CKTB | Life After Flower: Rise of the Edible · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Right now, though, we are joined by the great storyteller
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: here on the show. John Litkey is joining us. Among
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the many hats that John wars is he is involved
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  Speaker 1: in the legal cannabis industry in Ontario. So far this
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: year the market has hit one billion with a B
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  Speaker 1: dollars in Ontario.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning, John, Good morning Gene.
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  Speaker 1: Your latest article you're publishing is called Life after Flower,
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  Speaker 1: the Rise of the Edible, And according to you, the
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  Speaker 1: day of the joint is fading out, the day of
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  Speaker 1: the edible is coming around. But you're saying we're almost
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  Speaker 1: handing organized crime back the industry because of safety. Theater explain, Yeah, well.
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  Speaker 2: We've moved into the CpG era of consumer package goods. Gene.
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  Speaker 2: The baggie of weed is a historical relic for museums
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  Speaker 2: and time capsules. For millennials, gen z Z and the
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  Speaker 2: sober curious. The social ritual isn't asking enjoyment a back alley.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: It's actually just cracking a can of cannabis infused confused
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  Speaker 2: beverage or sharing a gurmet caramel or two. Smoking is
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  Speaker 2: actually itself becoming a niche Data shows edibles and extracts
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  Speaker 2: are commanding fifty percent of the market because it's discrete, predictable,
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  Speaker 2: and it doesn't make your living room smell like it's
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  Speaker 2: a you know, reggae concert. Quite frankly, but with the
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  Speaker 2: consumer mindset evolving into the twenty first century, regulators are
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  Speaker 2: still stuck in the prohibition mindset of twenty eighteen when
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  Speaker 2: we legalized it. And yeah, we are handing a subsidy
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  Speaker 2: to the black market because of the ten milligram THHC
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  Speaker 2: limit per pack per unit.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, the ten market black market subsidy. There's a catch,
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  Speaker 1: right though.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that is the catch there. It's just
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  Speaker 2: by having a small amount that is legally allowed per unit.
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  Speaker 2: So you can buy a package of edibles that, let's
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  Speaker 2: say has one hundred milligrams in it overall, but it
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  Speaker 2: comes with ten pieces of ten milligrams per piece. I
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  Speaker 2: spoke with one store owner and Windsor, who's on the
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  Speaker 2: front lines here, and he spends half of his day
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  Speaker 2: apologizing to American customers who are used to far higher
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  Speaker 2: milligram counts in their edibles. So if you're a frequent user,
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  Speaker 2: for example, the heavy hitters who account for the lion's
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  Speaker 2: share of industry spending, ten milligrams per unit is a
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  Speaker 2: rounding error. They're not going to buy ten legal packs
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  Speaker 2: and pay ten sets of taxes, potentially having to walk
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  Speaker 2: in and out of the store multiple times to be
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  Speaker 2: able to not go over the legal limit. They're just
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  Speaker 2: going to go to an unregulated website and buy a
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  Speaker 2: five hundred milligram bar for half of the price. So yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we're handing pan delivering our most valuable tax payers back
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  Speaker 2: to organized crime because of safety theater regulations that really
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  Speaker 2: don't reflect the reality on the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Safety theater what do you mean by that, Well.
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  Speaker 2: It's the appearance that we're actually doing something to make
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  Speaker 2: the people who are opposed to weed and the legalization
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  Speaker 2: there of feel more comfortable with it. We see this
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  Speaker 2: throughout government all the time. I couldn't give you an
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  Speaker 2: example right now off the top of my head, but
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  Speaker 2: when you start to look for it, it is government
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  Speaker 2: spending money. Are they creating regulations that don't achieve what
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  Speaker 2: the overall goal is? That create more pain and more
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  Speaker 2: hassle than is necessary to placate a minority voice, primarily
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  Speaker 2: because they're more interested in not losing votes. There you go,
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  Speaker 2: that's the definition of safety theater. Political theater.
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  Speaker 1: Now, what's I know when you go to these stores
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  Speaker 1: beverages versus edibles. You're also saying, and I didn't know this,
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  Speaker 1: that beverages that contain THFC are also called an edible.
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  Speaker 1: So why is so much regulatory label stuff?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the problem. I mean, it matters a
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  Speaker 2: lot because it's a category error with massive consequences. You
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  Speaker 2: don't call a glass of a cabernet that has grown
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  Speaker 2: from local grapes up in Niagara in edible, do you,
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  Speaker 2: So why would we treated Yeah, no, not at all.
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  Speaker 2: So why would we treat nanoemulsion beverages like it's a
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  Speaker 2: gummy bear? Beverages hit the system fast, just like a
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  Speaker 2: beer or an alcoholic beverage. But right now we actually
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  Speaker 2: have big tobacco and big pharma lobbying to keep these
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  Speaker 2: drinks in a you know, getting it to be more
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  Speaker 2: accessible in certain expansions and investments into some of the
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  Speaker 2: larger players. So we know that this sober curious movement
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  Speaker 2: is real. People want to swap the hangover for a
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  Speaker 2: cannabis beverage, but the government is still treating a refreshing
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  Speaker 2: beverage like it's a bottle of a prescription cop syrup
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  Speaker 2: or something of the like. This is an administrative size
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  Speaker 2: on common sense. And so long as we're still classifying
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  Speaker 2: something that it's not, you're going to have that stigma.
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  Speaker 2: Whereas someone hears edibles, they might think, oh, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I remember the nineteen seventies and there was that tray
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  Speaker 2: of brownies and I don't want to relive that experience,
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  Speaker 2: and it could still turn people off. And it's not
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  Speaker 2: the reality on the ground. And we need to treat
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  Speaker 2: adults like their adults. And right now, at the most
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  Speaker 2: base level, that means by having a definition list and
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  Speaker 2: vocabulary list that we can all agree upon.
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  Speaker 1: It is I'm wondering, is the LCBO involved in any
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  Speaker 1: of this pressure.
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  Speaker 2: I mean to a certain extent in that they continually
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  Speaker 2: lobby to they want. The LCBO doesn't have a direct
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  Speaker 2: involvement when I was thinking of that, it's the OCS,
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  Speaker 2: and then the AGCO of course has involvement as well.
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  Speaker 2: What comes into play here is just a administrative mindset
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  Speaker 2: that is still built in the pre twenty eighteen prohibitionary
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  Speaker 2: mindset here, and of course, living in Ontario specifically, but
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  Speaker 2: Canada more broadly, we're used to strong government control, and
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  Speaker 2: in absence of that, there is a strong concern that
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  Speaker 2: we will take our freedoms too far. So there is
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  Speaker 2: you knowsstant lobbying to ensure that the OCS remains the
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  Speaker 2: wholesaler that's the Ontario Cannabis Store. I don't know if
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  Speaker 2: the LCBO would like to ever see cannabis expand it
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  Speaker 2: into their purview. We know that under Kathleen Women the Liberals,
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  Speaker 2: there was a idea of having public cannabis stores that
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  Speaker 2: was shelved under doug Ford. But you know, at the
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  Speaker 2: end of the day, it just it comes down to
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  Speaker 2: we need to get past this idea of treating cannabis
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  Speaker 2: as if it's anything other than you know, a coffee.
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  Speaker 2: Coffee has psychoactive effects as well, but we don't treat
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  Speaker 2: it under lock and key. You can walk into an
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  Speaker 2: LCBO and buy unlimited amounts of alcohol with no questions asked,
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  Speaker 2: but if you asked to buy more than twenty eight
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  Speaker 2: grams of cannabis, you're sent out of the store to
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  Speaker 2: go put it into your car to walk back in
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  Speaker 2: in an administrative roundabout.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's nonsense, she said, didn't even know that
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  Speaker 1: that existed. Oh yeah, well, So you know, when cannabis
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  Speaker 1: became legal, I remember I was in Vancouver. I moved
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  Speaker 1: back to be close to my family, and man, there
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  Speaker 1: was a cannabis store on like every single block. Since
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  Speaker 1: that time, a lot of these stores have closed and
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  Speaker 1: now the numbers are fewer. So how do these legal
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  Speaker 1: guys even stay in business with all this red tape
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  Speaker 1: because it is a legal product.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a big problem. I mean they're suffocating
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  Speaker 2: underneath a regulatory red wedding here. And I use that
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  Speaker 2: phrase often when I chat with you. And one of
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  Speaker 2: the examples of it is the XCI stamp nightmare that
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  Speaker 2: they're dealing with. Like cigarettes, there needs to be an
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  Speaker 2: excise stamp applied to each cannabis product that's sold, which
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  Speaker 2: identifies it in its place from seed to sale. But
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  Speaker 2: we don't have one excise stamp for the country. We
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  Speaker 2: have thirteen different provincial stickers. So I found out through
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  Speaker 2: my investigating here for this piece, if a windsor factory
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  Speaker 2: wants to move their stock from British Columbia to let's say, Manitoba,
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  Speaker 2: they have to physically stop the machines, peel off the stickers,
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  Speaker 2: put on new stickers for a different process. This is
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  Speaker 2: a preventable crisis of inefficiency. But the silver lining though,
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  Speaker 2: is that the legal market is lining out on trust.
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  Speaker 2: The reporting that I had shows that illegal edibles are
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  Speaker 2: still often a toxic gamble. They have pesticides in them,
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  Speaker 2: and they don't always contain what the amount of THC
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  Speaker 2: that is claimed to be, sometimes as low as maybe
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  Speaker 2: twenty percent. People are moving towards premium confectionery goods because
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  Speaker 2: they want a clean, verified experience. The chase for the
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  Speaker 2: highest edibles is over. People want quality goods. I can
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  Speaker 2: say this not anecdotally, but just for myself personally, I
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  Speaker 2: don't like very high THC edibles. The highest amount that
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  Speaker 2: I typically tend to go towards is between a thirty
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  Speaker 2: to fifty milligram. When I had my Lounge and windsor
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  Speaker 2: my cannabis lounge, I had people who would offer five
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  Speaker 2: hundred to thousand milligram edibles from the black market, So
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  Speaker 2: you take it with a grain of salt, and I
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  Speaker 2: would refuse it every single time because I would never
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  Speaker 2: want to go that high whatsoever, even it was only
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  Speaker 2: fifty percent or twenty percent of that. So people want
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  Speaker 2: to have a standard dosed amount. Just like people want
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  Speaker 2: to be able to say, oh, I'll try one beer
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  Speaker 2: or I'll have one shot and if I like how
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  Speaker 2: it feels, I'll have a second one. They don't want
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  Speaker 2: to go and drink it two, four all at once
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  Speaker 2: for the first time.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I still didn't understand all the regulations.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I had to. I had to stop at
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  Speaker 1: a gas station this morning. You know I shouldn't have
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  Speaker 1: got gassed, but you know I waited and waited and waited,
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  Speaker 1: so I got just enough to make it to Hear
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  Speaker 1: and back. And you know, it's like ten after six
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  Speaker 1: in the morning. You know, on the beer's on display,
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  Speaker 1: the wines on display, other coolers that are on display,
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  Speaker 1: and this is a gas station, and you know, the
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  Speaker 1: guy working behind the counter is very very nice. I
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  Speaker 1: wonder why we don't see cannabis products in gas stations
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  Speaker 1: like we do beer and wine.
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  Speaker 2: This is what the most frustrating thing for me. Gene,
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  Speaker 2: having been involved in the industry, covered the industry, and
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  Speaker 2: having reported on the alcohol industry for nuver of years,
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  Speaker 2: we know that from the introduction the end of prohibition
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  Speaker 2: of alcohol in Canada through to the expansion under COVID
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  Speaker 2: to being able to purchase and have alcohol delivered from
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  Speaker 2: bars and restaurants. Oh my god, to extend ended patios
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  Speaker 2: to corner stores. The sky didn't fall. We have the
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  Speaker 2: institutional knowledge, we know what works. But when it came
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  Speaker 2: to cannabis and putting it as a retail sale, we
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  Speaker 2: decided to throw that rule book out and start fresh
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  Speaker 2: one hundred years ago, putting it all away. I don't
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  Speaker 2: get it. Maybe it's what made certain voters feel more comfortable,
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  Speaker 2: but you would think that since twenty eighteen, eight years later,
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  Speaker 2: the sky hasn't fallen. It hasn't been the chicken little
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  Speaker 2: scenario here. It's time to start treating consumers like adults
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  Speaker 2: that they are, and that means, you know, of course,
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  Speaker 2: make sure that it's safe, make sure that the sale
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  Speaker 2: is regulated, don't sell to minors, but treat adults like
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  Speaker 2: a el.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Come on interesting chat this morning. I appreciate it in
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: your expertise here. I know we're going to talk to
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  Speaker 1: you tomorrow morning too.
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  Speaker 2: Oh I'm looking forward to it always.
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  Speaker 1: Joe. Okay, thanks for this, John Shure, you appreciate it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: J John Litke on the legal cannabis business in Ontario.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that regulated today.