“Lock and key.”
That is the metaphor of the day... That there exists in your body a series of locks, woven along your skin, through your organs, into your brain. That there exists a plant that is able to produce molecules ready to serve as keys to these locks.
These bodily locks manage your appetite, your mood & energy, your reaction to pain, stress, and many more things that we are discovering daily. Thanks to the plant - a pungent, stubby, shrub-like thing - we can reach outside ourselves to grab hold of the keys.
It can mean many things when key is brought to lock. For some of us, it means a life of a little more joy, less pain and deeper rest. For others, it allows for an evening with friends to be made more enjoyable.
Muse was started with the belief that cannabis, thoughtfully included in one’s life, can better it and that life can be enhanced when occasionally unlocked by a plant.
Inhalation, absorption and ingestion are simply the ways we have discovered to bring those keys (THC, CBD, and many more cannabinoids besides) into the locks woven throughout every one of us. With the rollout of legalization 2.0, all those methods of unlocking are again available. Here’s what to expect, now that edibles, extracts, vapes and topicals are now fully legal.
When Can We Expect The 2.0 Products?
Though it is now legal to produce all of the 2.0 products (edibles, vapes, beverages, extracts, topicals), different categories will make their way onto Muse shelves at different phases. Vapes and edibles are already here, with available options set to grow throughout 2020. We expect beverages to be available beginning late winter/early spring, while extracts and topicals look to be the laggards of the 2.0 products, with a release window late spring.
How Many Options In Each Category Will Be Available?
Vape cartridges and pens will make up the majority of new products coming available in 2020, with edibles and beverages making up most of the remaining product options. Topicals and extracts options look to be much more limited in their availability, at least during the early days of legalization 2.0.
What Is Different?
Many of the changes which rolled through legal flower, pre-rolls and oils last year will be mirrored in the 2.0 rollout. Expect to see excise stamps and warning labels of the effects of cannabis use plastered onto packages which look vaguely medicinal, and graphics which somehow manage to make a leaf appear menacing.
Legalization 2.0 also brings maximum THC limits to vapes, edibles, extracts and topicals, with the only category being dramatically altered from their pre-legalization equivalents being edibles. We'll have more on that below.
Vapes
The highest priority category for 2.0 products, we can expect plenty of vaping options: Distillate or full-spectrum derived vaporizing liquid in a replaceable 510 thread cartridges, disposable pens as well as proprietary cartridges like the Pax Era. We have not yet seen any bulk liquid to refill your own cartridges, though that may come later on in 2020.
If you have any questions about the compatibility of legal cartridges with previously purchased batteries, feel free to ask us in-store.
While we are restricted from collecting/recycling vape cartridges and pens through in-store programs, we are working to provide a way for our customers to dispose of their used cartridges and pens sustainably. We will let you know when we have something more to announce.
How Safe are Vapes?
Even a year ago, vapes were touted as the future of cannabis consumption. By extracting the cannabinoids into a liquid, they were supposed to provide the quick onset of effects produced by traditional inhalation while avoiding the combustible material which poses some degree of risk for long term smokers. Legal producers rushed to make vape products available to Canadians.
However, after reports of severe lung disease being linked to vaping this past year, things look very different. Though the CDC has identified vitamin E, a substance not permitted in federally licensed vapes, as the source of the lung disease outbreak, many health care professionals have not yet ruled out a secondary irritant that also serves as a factor in the illness.
This outbreak of illness leaves everyone in the industry in an unclear position as to the safety and potential risks of vapes.
Despite this uncertainty, we can say confidently that the lowest risk vapes available will be the federally licensed options. The cheaper additives and flavouring used in some grey market vape products are banned from their federally legal equivalents.
If there is one cannabis category which benefits the most from strict federal regulations and independent testing, it is probably vape products.
We will make sure the vapes on the shelves at Muse will be the safest ones available to purchase. However, there may be potential risks that are still unknown at this moment. If more is discovered about potential harms, we will make sure our customers are made aware of them, and act accordingly.
Complicating matters, the Government of British Columbia has decided to heft a 20 per cent tax on vaping products and accessories. This makes federally licensed products dramatically more expensive than they would otherwise be and motivates customers to seek out higher risk black market options.
We will be voicing our objections to this bill and may in the future reach out to our customers to collect some consumer level perspectives of the negative consequences of the tax. Let us know if this is something you would be interested in.
More on the tax here.
Edibles
The legal edibles on our shelves will likely look and taste similar to those you may have tried before federal legalization but will now be an entirely different product altogether..
Expect to see chocolates, gummies, cookies, mints on our shelves in 2020. Though the products may be slightly less sweet, or a gummy may come in a neutral shape instead of a lego block (so as not to appeal to kids), there will be no significant differences in appearance.
These new edibles, however, will have a maximum THC limit of 10mg per package. These limits mean legal edibles will be much less potent when compared to gummies or cookies you may have consumed pre-legalization.
About Those THC Limits
At a THC limit of 10mg per package, edibles seem to be positioned as the entry-level option for more novice users. Now that anyone over 19 now has access to recreational THC in Canada, it may be useful to have an entry-level option for new users to try safely without being promptly sent to Mars. It makes sense that these entry-level options take the form of things they have eaten before: gummies, cookies and chocolates. A consequence of this limit, however, means that users who want or need an 80 mg gummy will no longer be able to find them in licensed stores.
A useful rule of thumb for legal edibles might go something like:
If you are an inexperienced user, edibles are an ideal starting point for your first experience with THC.
If your tolerance is low to average, legal edibles may now be a more enjoyable experience for you than they were previously. Nearly everyone who has come into Muse with a story of a trip gone bad has pointed to edibles as the culprit. The THC limits on legal options now mean that edibles are now much less risky options.
If your tolerance is high, a capsule or oil might be a better option for you. With a maximum THC limit 100 times that of legal edibles, they might provide a closer experience to the gummies or cookies used before legalization.
Beverages
Though they will be considered an edible, what makes beverages unique from a cookie or gummy is the promise of nano-emulsions. Companies claim to be able to make liquids containing cannabis which can pass through the blood-brain barrier and produce an onset time more akin to inhaling than ingesting. This sounds pretty great.
Expect a bunch of lightly flavoured waters, an indica and ginger or sativa and tonic, even 0% ABV beer and wine. Also coming are tasteless powders and liquids that can be mixed into other drinks.
Will these beverages be an excellent low-risk replacement for inhaling cannabis, avoiding the onset lag of traditional edibles? Will they slot more easily into Canadian norms around alcohol, serving to push forward the normalization of cannabis use? Or will the products crash and burn because they taste like someone dumped the contents of their bong into a Lacroix? Only time will tell.
Extracts and Topicals
Based on the 2.0 portfolios of cannabis producers, extracts and topicals seem to have the lowest priority of all the legalization 2.0 categories. A few of the more craft growers are focusing on hash, rosin and resin, while some new companies have come to market specializing in topicals and there may be more announcements to come later in 2020. However, as soon as there are options available, we will make sure that they are on our shelves.
Though the packaging requirements of extracts might mean hash packaged in small dollars instead of large bricks, extracts and topicals will remain very similar to their pre-legalization equivalents. Expect similar effects to the rosin or infused lotions you may have tried before legalization. If these options worked for you before, they likely still will.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of what to expect at Muse throughout 2020 as Legalization 2.0 rolls out.
Until next time,
The Muse Gang
Frida, Mike, Shayne, Alex, Angus, Paul, Dylan, & Lilah