Canada’s cannabis marketing: surprisingly compliant

October 1, 2024 | Staff

To date, Health Canada has issued just two Notice of Violations associated with potential violations of promotion prohibitions since October 17, 2018.

Between October 17, 2018 and March 31, 2024, Health Canada assessed 1,541 cases of potential non-compliance related to promotions. This resulted in 648 actions taken, the vast majority of them compliance emails or letters or compliance promotion emails or calls. (Note: This article has been edited to include the correct amount of actions taken)*.

Despite all of this activity, as of the end of March 2024, the federal agency has only issued two Notice of Violations (NOV) associated with potential violations of promotion prohibitions since October 17, 2018.

Just 11 of those 648 actions taken included warning letters, and 32 resulted in referrals to RCMP.

Health Canada also says they conducted five inspections at promotional events from April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2019, two in Toronto, one in Oro-Medonte, Ontario, one in Victoria, BC and one in Regina.

The federal Cannabis Act includes several different enforcement tools that can be considered when deciding on the appropriate enforcement actions to prevent or address non-compliance. While these tools do include options, from calls and/or letters to suspension or cancellation of a federal licence, the issuance of a ministerial order, or the issuance of administrative monetary penalties (AMP) of up to $1 million, the federal government tends to take a soft-touch approach, focussing more on first informing licence holders of their potential violations of federal rules before escalating to more significant penalties.

Health Canada uses information from both internal and external sources to help it identify any possible risks to public health and public safety, but a spokesperson for the agency tells StratCann that they do not collect data that shows how they became aware of any potential issues.

A media representative with Health Canada tells StratCann that the agency could, in the future, publish Notices of Violations or information related to administrative monetary penalties on its website once it has been determined that the recipient committed a violation.

*Editor’s Note: This article initially reported 134 actions taken since 2018. This was the number of actions taken in the most recent year alone. The total is 490 actions taken.