Is Cannabis Medicine?
Cannabis reformers in Canada are questioning taxes, especially on medical cannabis. It’s leading many to believe that the federal government, which regulates medical cannabis, doesn’t recognize cannabis medicine in the same way as other medicines.
“There’s only one medicine in Canada that gets taxed at all, and that’s cannabis,” said Brad Poulos, a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Management. “What this says to me is that the government does not actually consider cannabis to be medicine.”
Poulos is one of many who want to see tax reform come to the Cannabis Act. He believes the government has set the excise tax so high that the legal cannabis industry cannot compete with the illegal cannabis market.
“When it’s time to get rid of that illicit market, when you get rid of prohibition, you know what you don’t do? You don’t tax like crazy,” Poulos said.
Pierre Killeen, Vice-President of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs for the Cannabis Council of Canada, agrees. “We have a regulatory system that doesn’t make a lot of sense, that frankly prohibits the ability of legal cannabis producers to compete with illicit market products.
“If we want to achieve the objectives of legalization, we need a financially sustainable cannabis industry. We are government’s partners in this endeavour, although we have never really been treated by any level of government as a partner in this endeavour.”
So the question, “Is medical cannabis medicine?” in the eyes of the government is just one part of a system that needs tweaking.
Cannabis Medicine and Recreational Cannabis: Either Way, the Taxes are Hampering Industry – LPC
The CBC article (link below) goes many steps beyond the cannabis medicine debate. It also brings into question whether or not the legal cannabis market is outpacing the illegal market. The most recent government numbers showed that 48 per cent of respondents said they always get their cannabis from a legal, licensed source. That’s a direct result of taxes said Don Davies, MP for Vancouver Kingsway and the NDP health critic.
“A lot of the legitimate legal cannabis sector is hampered by excessive rules and regulations that are, I think, inhibiting it from reaching its full potential and actually helping to facilitate a lot of the [illegal] market that’s still there,” Davies said. “In my hometown of Vancouver, the storefront windows of cannabis stores have to be shaded in. You can’t look in. That’s not the case for a liquor store … More importantly, the labelling on products is not really telling the consumers what they want and need to know.”
And there’s the key. Nobody is calling for the removal of all rules and regulations in the Cannabis Act. But the rules are proving to be excessive – and expensive – including regulations around:
- Marketing and advertising
- Packaging
- Labelling
- Taxes including the minimum excise tax
- Cannabis pardons
Analysts have said for years that Canada’s cannabis industry needs to be fixed. Without those fixes, and with the cannabis industry already growing in the US, Canada’s potential dominance on world markets is at risk. And Canada’s own retail cannabis market is too. The debate over taxing “cannabis medicine” could be the least of our problems.
See the whole CBC article here
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