Denis Lévesque returns to the small screen with a series tracing the history of LCN, a non-stop news channel celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
On October 17, 2018, Canada became the second country to legalize cannabis. In Quebec, the Société québécoise du Cannabis has been a hit since opening its branches. First the huge queues, then the exhausted stocks. And in a short time.
If Ontario sees selling pot as an economic prospect, its neighbor to the east is betting on… health.
More than four years after the SQDCs started, David Bertrand-Collin, Vice President of Operations, Management, delivered a surprising speech to Denis Levesque: “The first advice we give is to not use cannabis,” he said.
“We will congratulate our teams and our employees when a customer leaves without a purchase. Absolutely. We are really in a health protection perspective.
It’s a sheer paradox. Sensitization of customers who want to consume the substance on the tablets. But it pays off and other countries are taking notice.
“We have this desire in Quebec to sell cannabis to protect health. SQDC President Jacques Farcy boasts that this is not trivial.
“Many countries that are addressing the issue of legalization come to us to understand how we’ve managed to handle the success we’ve known.”
From an economic point of view, Canadian producers are the source of supply for the stores. If Quebec farmers have been few since this experiment began, they are more active than before, provided their funding is “transparent.”
Even the legalization that was approved under Justin Trudeau’s government had a very clear goal, namely to fight crime. Can we conclude that the strategy worked?
One thing is for sure, many consumers prefer to consume it legally. The state-owned company sold 109,351 kg of cannabis in 2022, accounting for 58% of the total market volume.
Activists interpret these statistics as a low percentage because the legal age for consuming cannabis, which is 21 in the province of Belle, is detrimental to both business and the health of those under the legal age to acquire it.
Four years later, the SQDC and its products disagree, but still evoke just as many responses.
Watch the full broadcast of “Denis Levesque” on March 24 in the video at the top of the article.