The High North: Cannabis in Canada

Review By Margot Young

March 18, 2025

 

This collection tells a layered tale of cannabis regulation in Canadian society. Some of the contributions were written on the cusp of legalization but nonetheless researchers and the interested public will be engaged with the range of perspectives presented on the current cannabis landscape in Canada.

Contributions are organized into three parts. The first aims to contextualize policy developments with contributions that variously set out the regulatory and institutional history of cannabis. The second part looks at public health priorities and challenges that attend to cannabis legalization. The third part gives space to non-academic voices and provides methodological diversity to the collection. This section forefronts often overlooked or discounted voices that are nonetheless key interlocutors on the social and economic role cannabis consumption and production plays.

Cannabis was legalized in Canada on October 7, 2018. The history of regulation that preceded this event is idiosyncratic, illustrating at times a clear absence of rationality in legislative interventions. In 1923, Canada was among the first countries to criminalize cannabis, an act for which reasons were unclear. It wasn’t until the 1960s that cannabis use appeared firmly on the political agenda with criminalization strongly criticized as cannabis use grew and arrests increased. Ruminations from governments on legalization were common from the 1970s on. Disproportionately, arrests involved racialized and Indigenous individuals, an aspect that continues today and that, perhaps, deserved more attention in this collection.

Options for legal responses to cannabis lie along a continuum. At one end is full criminalization, involving prohibition, penalties and enforcement. At the other end, is full deregulation: no legal rules about cannabis at all. Some term this second option commercialization: a free market in cannabis. Decriminalization involves removal of criminal prohibitions and, often, installation instead of a regulatory regime with civil penalties. The current scheme in Canada is often called “legalization”. This legalization regime registers simultaneously across both regulatory and carceral dimensions. It imposes conditions on production, sale, and use mixed with both civil and criminal penalties for breach of these conditions.

The four chapters with which the collection begins are excellent. Together, they set out a social history of cannabis regulation, including specific discussions of government structures, the illegal cannabis market and the movement for medical marijuana. For instance, Jared J. Wesley’s “Cannabis-Policy Integration and Alignment” is an astute study of how regulation played out on the field of Canadian federalism. Opting out of a pan-

Canadian regulation scheme, provinces and territories each went their own route, generating a patchwork of regulations and markets across the country. The chapter by Jason Childs and George Hartner, ”Displacing the Illegal Cannabis Market,” looks more favourably on the provincial mix, as it allows useful policy analysis of what kinds of regulations might best displace the illegal cannabis market. Accessibility, variety, and quality vary across provinces but all have seen, in the early months of legalization, the continuing strength of an illegal market.

One of the options for dealing with cannabis is “craft cannabis,” a reference tantalizingly dropped in a number of the contributions in this collection. The editors refer to this as a legacy of the cannabis “folk market”. It is claimed that craft cannabis would prioritize sustainability, local economic growth, and cannabis quality. Too little is discussed about what this involves, except to link it to cooperative small scale or family farming. The editors do compare it to the appellation model of French wine growing.

What is well-discussed, across a number of chapters, is the current corporatization of legal cannabis production and sale. Michael Devillaer, in “Cannabis Legalization,” charts how the health and safety concerns that, in part, animated legalization were undermined by corporate capture in the policy process and the prevailing revenue-driven, private-industry model currently in play. Chapters on mental health and cannabis use and on chemical contamination of cannabis during its production phase add to a complex picture of the legalization regime.

Finally, the third part, as already mentioned, contains a range of personal voices about cannabis use and the industry behind that use. Worth mentioning is the document set out by Kanenhariyo Seth LeFort called “Dusting Off the Path – Tsi Nionkwarihotens,” on Kanyen’kehà:ka customary law and practices as they bear on cannabis dispensaries on Mohawk territories. Other contributions give insight into experiences of workers in corporate cannabis production and participants in illegal cannabis operations.

This collection is remarkable for who it brings to the conversation: researchers from many disciplines, activists, and cannabis industry insiders. It is well-worth reading.