California is in the process of legalizing, and it's supposed to go live in early 2018. One of the aspects of California's law, which is different from what we see in Washington and in Colorado, is that California is going to allow for marijuana lounges, so on-premises consumption.
From a public health perspective it's unclear about how this is going to play out, especially when we talk about impaired driving. If you have a bunch of people who used to consume at home and now they're consuming in a marijuana lounge that could increase the number of people driving under the influence of cannabis. On the other hand, if you had people who used to just go to the bar and get drunk and drive and now they're just going to the marijuana lounge and getting stoned and driving home, that would probably be a net win for society because we know that the bulk of the research suggests that people who are driving drunk tend to get in more accidents than those who are driving stoned, but still, the bulk of the research suggests that driving stoned is worse than driving sober.
One of the interesting things is going to be what happens to people who drive under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana. That's where there's a really significant risk in increasing the probability of getting into an accident. It's unclear about how these on-premises businesses are going to influence that. That's why I think public policy can play an important role in thinking about whether or not to allow this and allow for zoning.
One of the things is that the provinces may likely be making decisions about this. One of the things we could do is to hold off on that and watch what happens in California and learn from their experiences. They're also going to be dealing with this indoor air law. It's unclear to me what's going to happen. Will you able to vape inside, maybe dab inside, but if you want to smoke a joint you'll have to go outside? I'm not sure how that's going to play out, and I expect there's going to be a fair amount of variation in California that Canada could learn from.