While cannabis legalization is set for October, a cannabis retailer says there’s no standard unit to determine how potent the plant will be.
Nathan Mison, from corporate retail store Fire and Flower, will be speaking to stakeholders Wednesday, Sept. 5 in Kelowna in order to discuss the impact of cannabis in communities.
Mison spoke with the Capital News prior to his meetings, saying one of the issues with regulating cannabis is that there’s no standardization for cannabis strains.
“All cannabis that we will have in our stores, as well as the Liquor Distribution Branch stores, will be from Health Canada-approved licensed producers, so I think one of the greatest opportunities will be if Health Canada could create a form for standardization and naming,” he said. “The problem with that is cannabis has had a variety of names and different strands so I think it’s a unique conversation that needs to happen at a regulator level in conjunction with the licensed producers to start to create standardization.”
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The B.C. government has licensed its first Liquor Distribution Branch store for retail marijuana sales and has signed agreements with 31 federally licensed producers to stock it when legalization takes effect in October. The first LDB-operated cannabis store location is in Kamloops’ Columbia Place shopping centre, which also has an LDB liquor store.
The store will be staffed by 20 employees, including managers and “knowledgeable cannabis consultants,” the ministry says.
With the popularity of cannabis in B.C., legalization will also provide an opportunity for unique craft products, Mison said.
“How do you create a form where people have been (growing) it in British Columbia for a long time to be involved in a regulated legal market and craft?”
Legalization at the federal level is set for Oct. 17 and Mison said regulations will continue to evolve with feedback from consumers.
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And in terms of different strains, there is the medical market, with research, that the province is able to draw on, he said.
Fire and Flower is a corporate retail store specializing in elevating Canadian cannabis products through experiential strategies and education-based programming. Throughout the process of legalization, Fire & Flower has taken a leading approach to responsible retail, product education and community engagement.
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