Canada releases rules for cannabis drinkables and edibles

Canada | Recreational cannabis is set to enter a new era later this year when drinkables and edibles will become legal. In June 2019, Health Canada officials announced the regulations for those new categories as well as a timetable for their coming to market.

Media report that drinkables, edibles, and other new products will become legal on 17 October 2019, exactly one year after Canada legalised the recreational use of cannabis. As of 17 October, producers can initiate a 60-day minimum notification and approval process with the government. If all goes well, the first products will hit the market by mid-December. However, due to a backlog, the products on offer at dispensaries could remain sparse well into the next year.

Under the new rules, THC limits are allocated by package, not by unit or serving size. For edibles, a blanket limit of 10 mg THC applies to all packages regardless of contents. This means that a single cookie packaged individually can contain a full 10 mg. Not so in the case of drinkables. The 10 mg THC content applies to a 6-pack of cannabis beverages, according to a Health Canada official. In effect, a bottle of non-alcoholic beer may only contain 1.6 mg THC.

In the US state of Colorado, for example, a single bottle of non-alcoholic beer may have up to 10 mg THC added.

Product labelling is also a central concern. Labels may not draw any associations with alcoholic beverages, which means that terms like “cannabis beer”, “cannabis wine,” “Chardonnay,” and “IPA” are forbidden.

Marketers’ ingenuity will be challenged. Insiders joke that a popular new term for cannabis beers could be “barley water”.