Today is Legalization Day in Canada.
The specifics vary from place to place: you only have to be 18 years old in Quebec to purchase cannabis, whereas in most provinces you have to be 19; and while you can smoke cannabis anywhere you can smoke tobacco in Ontario, you can only consume cannabis in private residences in New Brunswick. But the through-line is the same: if you’re over 19 years old, you can legally consume cannabis in all ten provinces and three territories of Canada, from sea to sea to sea.
This is just the second time in the world that a country has legalized recreational cannabis: Uruguay legalized the drug in 2015. But there are some key differences: the population of Uruguay is only 3.3 million people, which is slightly less than the population of Greater Montreal, and less than half the population of the GTA. And at the time, only 25% of Uruguayans supported legalization. Today, 70% Canadians think that legalizing cannabis was a good idea. Canadians from all walks of life are rallying around legal cannabis, and it’s amazing to see.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that people around the world are watching us right now. Some are looking for justification for continued prohibition of cannabis in their own country. Others are looking to Canada to be an example of cannabis legalization done right.
So what we’re saying is, today is a special day. And what happens in Canada over the next few years will heavily influence how the rest of the world treats cannabis. While Uruguay has started paving the way, what we are doing here in Canada is basically unprecedented. Being the first G7 nation to legalize cannabis is huge.
We want Canadians to buy in to legal cannabis. To us, “buying in” means taking the cannabis space seriously. There will always be those who will only think of cannabis consumers as “potheads,” and it’s all of our responsibility to change that perception of cannabis consumers to something that more accurately represents the cannabis consumers of today: ordinary people who happen to consume cannabis.
That means creating serious accessories for cannabis consumption, fostering educated and responsible consumption, and continued innovation in the space. We’ll come back to all of these topics here on Spark.BRNT. But for now, sit back, relax, and enjoy a particular recently-legalized activity.
Between you and us, we intend to.