For quality control, it's a challenge, because we're not able to access Health Canada's certified labs. They will test our cannabis if we have someone send it in who is legally allowed to possess, but if I put it on my website that a lab tested our cannabis and say “here are the results”, Health Canada will call that lab and say that they're going to lose their licence, that they can't test dispensary cannabis. I can put out whatever results I want, but only I know if I'm telling the truth. I can't tell you which lab did the results. That leaves us in a very difficult position.
We also do our own study. The first thing we do when we get raw buds into our dispensary is look at them under a microscope. I would encourage members to do the same thing. You can see a lot in terms of mould, mildew, the quality of the trichomes and the resinous glands, if they're there and they're ripe. That's just the first step. If it most of it doesn't pass that, we will do a taste test on it. Someone will smoke a bit of it. You can tell if there are chemical contaminants and if it's been over-fertilized. Then we'll send it to a lab, if we can, and after that, if it meets all the standards, we'll put it our shelves.
On edibles and other products, with edibles we typically supply our producers with our cannabis, with an extract, so that we know they're getting a standardized amount and we know where it comes from. We can give them the same strain or a very similar product to help them standardize what they're making. A lot of edibles makers don't use raw buds. They will use an extract so they can make something of a known potency and then put that into their product to help them standardize the dosages.
As to age limit, if I were in charge of the world, I'd make it 16 years old to buy cannabis from a legal place.... That being said, I'm happy with the limit being the same as alcohol. That's not a problem.
The one thing I see lacking in this legislation is that there is no allowance for a parent to give cannabis to their child. You can give alcohol to your children at pretty much any age. A lot of young kids have half a glass of wine with dinner, and we don't criminalize those parents. If those parents were to give their children cannabis or share a joint with their 17-year-old child or something, they could be criminalized and face some serious repercussions. I think that is an issue. To me, the use of cannabis by youth is a family issue to be determined at the family level. This legislation doesn't allow for any sort of family decisions on that, which I think is really a big problem.