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Update:
On December 21, 2022, Canada issued Announcement No. SOR/2022-251 to amend the regulations on cannabis beverages. The main contents include:
(1) Edible cannabis is allowed to be added to the beverage, and the content of tetrahydrocannabinol is limited to no more than 10mg in each individual sales package, and the maximum daily intake of tetrahydrocannabinol for adults is 50mg; Adults are allowed to carry or own up to 17.1L (equivalent to 48 cans of 355ml independently packaged products) of cannabis beverages in public places;
(2) For the licensed processors of cannabis beverages, there is a 12-month transition period for updating the labels of cannabis beverages. Distributors and retailers may continue to distribute or sell their existing stocks of previously labeled cannabis beverages and are not affected by this transition period. The announcement shall come into force as of the date of publication of the Official Gazette.
In Canada, the Cannabis Act sets the public possession limit for dried cannabis and equivalent limit for cannabis in other forms. However, currently, compared with other non-solid forms, the possession of cannabis beverages is more restrictive, which also affects the sales and marketing of cannabis beverages. This proposed amendment aims to address the unpremeditated restrictions the dried cannabis equivalency currently poses on cannabis beverages. The key revisions can be summarized as the followings:
1. Public Possession Limit
As per the Cannabis Act, currently, adults are prohibited from possessing in public or distributing to another adult more than 30g of dried cannabis or its “equivalent” in other forms of cannabis for non-medical purposes. Cannabis beverages currently belong to the “non-solids containing cannabis” class, where the equivalent amount to 1g of dried cannabis is 70g, which means that an adult is able to possess a maximum of 2,100g (or approximately 2.1L) of cannabis beverages in public.
The proposed amendment intends to increase the dried cannabis equivalency for cannabis beverages so that 1g of dried cannabis is equal to 570g of cannabis beverages. This would, in turn, increase the public possession limit for cannabis beverages for an adult from 2,100 g (approximately 2.1 L) to 17,100g (approximately 17.1L).
2. Product Labeling
The amendment requires that the label of any container in which edible cannabis products are packaged must include a public possession limit statement outlining the amount of dried cannabis that the product is equivalent to. This can help consumers and law enforcement to determine whether an individual is compliant with the federal public possession limit. Once the proposed amendment come into force, the labels of cannabis beverages would need to be updated with a new public possession limit statement.
3. Transition Period
To reduce the impact of these changes on the industry, all licence holders and persons authorized to distribute or sell edible cannabis products are still allowed to sell cannabis beverages that have been packaged and labelled in accordance with the current requirements within 12 months after the implementation of the amendment. After the 12-month transition period, all cannabis beverages distributed and sold by holders of a licence for processing would be required to include a new public possession limit statement.
The amendments will increase the amount of cannabis beverages that an adult could possess in public, which may result in changes in consumer preferences, leading to cannabis beverages becoming a more popular cannabis product. Despite the proposed changes to the public possession limit for cannabis beverages, all other public health controls on edible cannabis products (including cannabis beverages) will remain unchanged.
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