What Canada Got Right, and Wrong: Brad Poulos on Legalizing Cannabis

Friends and followers, let’s go north for a minute.

Brad Poulos ran tech businesses, sold one, and started teaching entrepreneurship at Toronto Metropolitan University. Around 2015, when Justin Trudeau telegraphed that Canada would legalize, Brad jumped in to study the industry. He started a cannabis education program at his university, the first one in Canada. Canada legalized in the fall of 2018, and Brad has been watching it up close ever since.

I wanted this conversation because Canada is the closest thing we have to a test run. Down here, we are still arguing about whether the genie is out of the bottle. Up there, they have had years of living with it. So I asked Brad straight out. Is the coast clear?

One rulebook to grow it, a patchwork to sell it

Here is the big difference, as Brad explained it. In Canada, production is regulated only at the federal level. Growing, edibles, drinkables, hash, all of it. One set of rules. Distribution is left to the provinces and territories, and they went in very different directions:

• Fully private stores, like Ontario, where Brad lives.
• Hybrid models in some provinces.
• Government-owned stores, the way liquor is sold in most of Canada.

The numbers tell the story. Quebec runs government stores and has around 200 of them, with a little over half of Ontario’s population. Ontario has about 1,600. Brad calls himself a free market capitalist, and even he said of that: “it’s not sustainable.”

He still does not want the government picking winners. His example was Canada’s taxi licenses. Limit the licenses and you get false scarcity, and a bunch of rich license owners who are not even driving the cars.

Three rules he would change tomorrow

I asked Brad which rules do not make sense. He had three, all federal.

Childproof packaging on flower. Gummies, yes, he said. They look like candy. But flower is not psychoactive until it has been heated. There is no LD50 for cannabis, no lethal dose for half the population. Alcohol has one, and alcohol does not ship in childproof packaging. Brad’s response: “So explain that one to me.”

A flat excise tax of a dollar a gram. That made sense when cannabis sold for around ten Canadian dollars a gram. Massive overbuilding pushed wholesale prices down to three or four dollars, and now that dollar is a big piece of the price. The government wanted to push organized crime out. Brad says the tax hands the illicit market a price advantage instead.

Advertising rules borrowed from tobacco. People smoke tobacco and people smoke weed, so the rules got copied. Brad thinks the use cases are much closer to alcohol. I live this one. If my copy says smoking, the post gets banned or shadow banned. I have learned to write around my own product.

A gateway to what?

Then Brad flipped one of the oldest lines in the book.

He also told me about the official put in charge of legalization in Canada. A former Toronto chief of police. Brad has never forgotten him saying they were trying to legalize cannabis, not normalize it.

But Brad does not see Canada going backwards. He puts adult use somewhere between 25 and 30 percent, and 15 to 20 percent of people over 65. Pulling back the reins, in his view, would be political suicide. Normalization is slow. It is also hard to undo.

Normal is not a law. It is people.

I told Brad about the Cannabis Cup in Denver. Thousands of strangers. Smoke everywhere. Music, food, people giving away joints. And no fights. No beef. One thing in common, and everybody got along.

That is what normal looks like. It does not come from a statute. It comes from people showing up and teaching. My friend Farmer Tom Lauerman has watched lawmakers reverse course after someone took the time to show them the truth. Read about how Washington changed its mind on concentrates.

So here is my question for you. Who in your life still thinks this plant is a gateway to ruin? And when is the last time you sat down with them?

Brad asked me on air whether GUDWUDZ is sold in Canada yet. Not yet. Right now the GUDWUDZ collection sells direct to consumer, and his advice was to get into retail. Noted, Brad.

Read the full episode recap on Unscripted Cannabis, and find Brad, who now advises small businesses across every industry, at bradpoulos.com.

GUDWUDZ is a handcrafted walnut smoking accessory brand rooted in culture, craft and intentional living. Just J, also known as Mr. Gudwudz, hosts conversations on Unscripted Cannabis. More from Just J at mrgudwudz.com.