They legalized Cannabis and managed to botch it in spectacular ways that most people aren't aware of. It has been nothing but a gift to the black market selling mislabeled and contaminated products with virtually no risk of enforcement, while legal producers are all circling the financial drain and trying to stay solvent long enough for the USA or a major EU country to legalize. What could have been a major economic driver has seen tens of thousands of layoffs and site closures around the country, mainly in rural areas.
The federal government essentially took all of the most onerous and costly regulations from pharmaceuticals, agriculture, tobacco, and alcohol production and sales and applied them to cannabis. Meanwhile law enforcement efforts to curb black market cannabis production and sales basically ceased.
Several studies have shown that THC and CBD labeling are nearly always made up when it comes to black market retail and online unregulated dispensaries. Nearly all of the products also contain levels of bacteria, mold, toxins, pesticides, fungicides, and heavy metals that far exceed what legal producers are required to pay expensive analytical chemistry labs to test for before sales. Most of these things wont cause immediate symptoms, but (for example) Tomato fungicides aren't meant to be soaked into flowers then heated and inhaled and repeated exposure will almost certainly cause unattributed health issues down the line.
On top of all of this, the federal government and provinces decided to apply sales, excise taxes, and other fees right out the gate. Then provinces decided to only sell/distribute through crown corporations where the mandatory markup may as well be considered another tax.
All in all, when you buy a gram of cannabis in Canada for $6-10, 80-90% of that is tax. The cost of production, regulatory compliance, and a profit margin somehow need to come from the other 10-20%.
Meanwhile the black market can sell tainted mislabeled products for as low as it takes to eat legal market share, with no overhead or taxes to worry about. With free delivery!
Legalization has been a success in the sense that nobody is getting in trouble for possession anymore. Nearly everything else has been a disaster behind the scenes.
Disclaimer: Yes, LPs overbuilt and overestimated demand. There was mismanagement by pubcos. I was there.
