Meanwhile, consumers who helped the province’s cannabis regulator, the Ontario Cannabis Store, reach this milestone are being left in the dust.
In 2018, at the dawn of cannabis’ legalization, Altria spent $1.8 billion to acquire a near-half stake in Cronos Group, a multinational company aiming to sink its roots in Canada’s fertile cannabis industry.
This has led to some foreshadowing of a future cannabis market mainly consisting of larger corporate interests, creating a sort of ‘Big Tobacco 2.0.’ This is not what the cannabis industry seems to want its image to be.
Hexo, the largest supplier of cannabis to Quebec’s SQDC, appeared in the news recently for posting first quarter losses of nearly $117 million.
During the same period when the company was bleeding money and shareholders, it apparently saw fit to compensate its executives with millions extra in 2021.
The hybridized structure of Ontario’s cannabis market offers a government-run online store, as well as a network of independent “brick and mortar” stores.
Including the OCS as a middle man has resulted in a system in which physical locations order from the OCS in bulk purchases — paying provincial HST — to then sell products to Ontario consumers with the same sales taxes.
Shrinking the potential profit margins of the rapidly growing number of retail stores while consequently rewarding licensed producers able to scale up in the initial stages of the legal market is counter-productive to building a self-sustaining cannabis industry.
Ontario’s cannabis market is growing despite being stifled in its early years, and now is the time for Canadians to choose between buying cannabis products from the Marlboro man, or from farms in Canada.