The federal government in Ottawa is set to release Canada’s final regulations for cannabis edibles, vaping and topical products.
The new rules, to be announced Friday, maintain most of Ottawa’s early proposals drafted last year while adding several new provisions that ensure a clear division between legal pot offerings and the tobacco and alcohol industries.
Some of the government’s amendments include adding new provisions to prohibit associating cannabis products with tobacco or vaping products, allowing multiple cannabis-infused edibles or beverages to be packaged together as long as the total amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) sold does not exceed 10 milligrams, and adding new provisions that limit how cannabis is advertised.
The final regulations on next-generation cannabis products come after a recent report from Deloitte found the Canadian market for edibles and extracts is worth an estimated $2.7 billion annually over 12 months once they become legal for sale in October. That’s on top of the roughly $6 billion estimated domestic market for recreational and medical cannabis. Health Canada said in its draft regulations released in December that it expects cannabis products other than dried cannabis to account for just under half of the total market.
Other changes to the final regulations include prohibiting the manufacturing of all cannabis products in the same building as food products, removing the proposed prohibition on pressurized containers such as metered-dose inhalers, and standardizing requirements for the display of THC and cannabidiol (CBD) concentration on product labels to help determine their public possession limit.
