The ‘Highs’ and Lows of Cannabis Legalization
A review of The High North: Cannabis in Canada, edited by Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann
If you thought cannabis legalization in Canada was a victory, think again. The picture is much more complicated, assert the editors and writers of The High North: Cannabis in Canada, published by UBC Press (2022). Inconsistent regulation from province to province; ‘pump and dump’ stock schemes that have made some fabulously wealthy while collapsing entire companies; poor workplace conditions that include high worker exposure to toxic chemicals; and a double standard of law enforcement that favours corporate cannabis producers are just a few of the issues that have emerged since the federal government fully legalized cannabis in 2018.
For these and other reasons, state Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann in the Introduction, “it is our position that legalization is a pyrrhic victory, a win that inflicts a devastating toll on the victor, one tantamount to a defeat.”[1] The entire edifice of legalization in Canada was founded upon a government narrative that went something like this: The illicit marijuana trade was dominated by organized crime, creating dangers to cannabis users both from violence and chemically adulterated bud. By bringing cannabis production under government licensing and production standards, the argument went, we’ll ensure the public is provided with a clean, high quality product with minimum potential for harm.
As things have turned out since 2018, little of this has proven true. Indeed, some of these premises are patently false. The organized crime link was at best a bureaucratic myth fostered by police forces seeking to perpetuate or increase drug war budgets. “In five hundred investigations (1997–2005), just 5 percent of grow-ops were linked to organized crime or street gangs.”[2] And in terms of actual harm, the Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms Scientific Working Group concluded in 2018 that, “the costs and harms observed for alcohol and tobacco exceeded those attributable to all illegal drugs combined.”[3]
The editors and writers contend that much of the government program carries into the present the false narratives spun by the infamous 1936 film Reefer Madness, the logic of which has been used to characterize cannabis use as an “addiction,” or a “gateway” to harder drugs. This provides the ultimate bureaucratic logic for bringing cannabis under full government control, in partnership with private corporate entities. Some of the writers in The High North such as Michelle St. Pierre, Sarah Daniels and Zach Walsh, in their chapter on “cannabis substitution,” or what used to be called “harm reduction,” work firsthand with addicted populations. Despite the continued success observed in cannabis use weaning people off harder drugs, their clients are still required to run a government gauntlet in order to legally obtain medical marijuana. This is due in part to a persistent reluctance amongst scientists to study cannabis through the lens of potential health benefits rather than potential harms. Thus, recent studies claiming that heavy cannabis use can lead to psychosis or developmental harm in adolescent users has thrown a distinctly Reefer Madness era haze over the health implications.
Yet the government’s stated concern for the health of cannabis users rings hollow. The inherent problems of industrial-scale production when thousands of plants are crowded together indoors, such as mould and pests, have meant that Licensed Producers (LPs) have resorted to heavy chemical use. Cannabis is an “accumulator plant,” McCann explains, meaning that it accumulates everything in its environment, “and these substances remain in the plant, influencing all future development…”[4] Thus, any use of pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers is bound to contaminate the end product and create health risks for users. Licensed producers such as Mettrum were found to be using the banned pesticide Myclobutanil, to name only one chemical used. Not only does Health Canada permit LPs to use 20 or more chemicals besides “highly toxic fertilizers,”[5] it looked the other way when illegal chemicals were used by some LPs. It was a revelation to learn in this book that many LPs also irradiate their cannabis in order to reach government-mandated maximums for mould spores. McCann, who had worked in the cannabis industry prior to legalization, has a special concern for the toxic exposure of workers in these new industrial-scale grow-ops. Still, he observes, “the health of workers in the industry does not appear to be a matter of concern for regulators.”[6]
And in terms of government-licensed cannabis producers somehow holding to a higher moral code than the supposed “organized crime” producers of yesteryear, this too has proven false. As with the turn-of-the-century dot.com bubble or the junk mortgage scam of 2008, as soon as licenses were given and cannabis corporations floated on the stock market, scam artists appeared to take advantage of the situation. “Canadian securities regulators found that 25 newly registered medical cannabis companies were misleading investors,” notes Michael Devillaer.[7] Cannabis stocks surged and then collapsed in value, putting some companies out of business.[8] And heavy lobbying through “cash for access” political events—particularly with the Liberal Party—was rampant leading up to legalization. Already by November 2014, “Health Canada issued citations to 20 separate licensed producers for continuing illegal advertising practices…”[9] Two companies, Aphria and MedReleaf, exploited Canadian veterans by grossly overcharging them for medical cannabis covered under medicare. The unethical behavior extended to the product itself; in the first six months after legalization Health Canada issued 11 recall alerts from nine different producers.[10]
A major part of the problem is the system of industrialized production and consumption itself. As the editors explain, “consumption rituals express ideas of order and disorder that protect the interests of the owners of production… Once investors have a stake, they will continue to invest more to protect their investment and to overcome competitors,”[11] with the social and even healthcare costs a secondary consideration at best. In his now-classic work Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher warned that, “In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man.”[12] In the cannabis industry as in all other industries now, “This is the philosophy of materialism… which is now being challenged by events.”[13]
So then, what is the way forward? Schumacher, writing nearly 50 years ago, saw it partly as a spiritual crisis of society:
“The ‘logic of production’ is neither the logic of life nor that of society… what is most needed today is a revision of the ends which these means are meant to serve. And this implies, above all else, the development of a lifestyle which accords to material things their proper, legitimate place, which is secondary not primary.”[14]
Following Schumacher’s logic, Hathaway and McCann have a vision for a healthier, more sustainable cannabis industry in Canada. They envision a decentralized, local producer model similar to craft breweries and vineyards whose products appeal to the ever-growing market for organically produced, low environmental impact foods and beverages:
“Channeling billions of dollars of cannabis revenue into small-scale farming ventures would spur rural renewal,” they write.[15] “A system of appellations (much like the famous wine-growing region of Champagne) would help sustain rural economies and local jobs—and even promote agri-tourism—in addition to reducing energy consumption; protecting ecosystems, soil, and the integrity of agricultural products; and preventing price collapses in agricultural commodities.”[16]
McCann also foresees an end to the dominant indoor cultivation model—a legacy of prohibition days when grow-ops were forced indoors. Cannabis is a highly resilient plant that thrives outdoors, which also eliminates the extreme expenses of lighting and mould-defeating ventilation systems.
The editors do a fine job of balancing academic and anecdotal sources. They point out that until the 18th century, “experience and experiment were closely connected terms, designating how knowledge was arrived at through testing and observation.”[17] Hathaway and McCann were guided by a desire to create an ethnographic study that “tried to capture ‘the conversations, voices, attitudes… and concerns of the daily life of the people with whom the author participates.’”[18] McCann, with his personal experience of the industry, does this especially well compared to some of the tinder-dry chapters on policy analysis—a necessary component of the book but probably only of interest to policy wonks. The High North thus covers all relevant perspectives in the emerging legal cannabis industry: women entrepreneurs, the First Nations experience, lifetime cannabis activists such as Marc and Jodie Emery, and front line addiction counselors, in addition to the sociological and ethnographic studies.
More and more now, the excesses of industrial civilization are proving untenable, even hostile to the future of life on this planet. The way forward is not doubling down on a “fourth industrial revolution,” as the World Economic Forum elites would have it, but a return to a holistic relationship with the Earth that is community, not corporate-based. But in order to do that we must undo two centuries of industrial thinking, and as Schumacher urged so long ago, enshrine again “non-material values, such as justice, harmony, beauty (and)… health.”[19]
For more information: https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-high-north
[1] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, Introduction, UBC Press, 2022, p. 6.
[2] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, Introduction, ibid., p. 6, emphasis mine.
[3] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 115.
[4] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 190.
[5] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 193.
[6] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 197.
[7] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 121.
[8] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., pp. 316–17.
[9] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 120.
[10] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 131.
[11] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., pp. 14, 15, emphasis mine.
[12] E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Sphere Books Abacus edition, London, 1973 (1978 ed.), p. 246.
[13] E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Sphere Books Abacus edition, ibid., p. 246.
[14] E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Sphere Books Abacus edition, ibid., p. 247, emphasis mine.
[15] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 22.
[16] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 318.
[17] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 12.
[18] Andrew D. Hathaway and Clayton James Smith McCann, The High North: Cannabis in Canada, ibid., p. 11.
[19] E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Sphere Books Abacus edition, ibid., p. 246.
It's an important book given where we're at right now with the legal cannabis regime. Not all the chapters are for every reader but the anthology format allows one to choose what is most interesting personally. Prior to reading this I had no idea what cannabis industry workers had to go through to survive an average workday, both pre- and post-legalization!
This book sounds amazing! :-)