By Jon Hiltz

 

This Wednesday, the next leap forward for an adult-use marijuana market across Canada will take place. The task force chosen by Prime Minister Trudeau earlier this year is set to hand in the highly anticipated report that will outline their suggestions for the entire national marijuana industry.

The report is expected to cover everything, including the minimum age of consumption, a list of legal products allowed to be sold, and the hotly-debated topic of where people will access legal cannabis.

The Government of Canada set up a portal over the summer to receive suggestions from Canadians on where they want to buy their pot, what forms they want to see it in, and other industry-related inquiries. The website received over 30,000 submissions which were reviewed by the task force. The task force members also traveled to U.S. states with cannabis legalization where they spoke with officials to get a sense of what worked well and had room for improvement.

Many have already weighed in on the issue over the past few months, including the Canadian Medical Association who said that the legal age limit to purchase pot should be 21 years.

As well, numerous polls from official research institutes have been regularly asking Canadians questions on marijuana to make up for the lack of communication from the federal government on the subject. A large number of these polls aimed to determine exactly where citizens want to see pot sold — dispensaries being the popular choice among most Canadians.

The anticipation from the many Canadians and foreigners who hold significant stakes in this report is nearly palpable. Up until this point, Prime Minister Trudeau and his government have been incredibly tight-lipped, leaving a deep vacuum of speculation as to what cannabis reform will look like in the first G7 country to do it.

The only two modifications to the cannabis landscape in Canada this year, have been for medical marijuana. The first was an amendment that allowed patients to grow their own. Most recently, Canada’s largest pharmacy chain, Shoppers Drug Mart, applied to be a medical cannabis producer for the purposes of dispensing pot to qualifying patients.

It’s unclear how soon the report will be made public, but cannabis lovers and investors across Canada are awaiting the results like one of Pavlov’s Dogs. The submission of the task force’s marijuana framework is the latest bell to go off, but will the industry still have the same appetite for cannabis legislation in Spring of 2017.

Only time will tell. Until then, all we can do is wait and salivate.