Marketing, branding needed for cannabis products, licensed producers say

Garfield Mahood has spent 30 years fighting for theCanadian government to require plain packaging for cigarettes.

So, the long-time non-smokers' rights activist says he doesn'thave much faith in the government's ability to regulate and restrictthe marketing of marijuana.

"They identified tobacco products as a cause of disease back inthe 1950s," said Mahood, president of the Campaign for Justice onTobacco Fraud. "They've never been able to bring this epidemic
close to a conclusion.

"What would give you faith that health departments are going toeffectively regulate any health problems related to these otherdrugs?"

As the Liberal government prepares to introduce legislation to"legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana" before thissummer, one area that the cannabis industry and public healthadvocates are closely watching is whether it will allow companies tobrand and promote their products.

A task force appointed by the federal government recommended itrequire plain packaging and a limit to advertising similar to therestrictions on tobacco.

But licensed producers of medical marijuanaargue that cannabis isn't as dangerous as tobacco and that brandingand marketing are necessary to attract consumers from the blackmarket to the legal industry.

'There are health risks'

Mahood began advocating for plain packaging on tobacco in themid-1980s. Governments over the years declined to implement it until2016, when Health Minister Jane Philpott vowed to ban branding oncigarette boxes and a bill was introduced in the Senate.

The aim is to strip the industry's ability to attach"sophistication and allure" to its products, said Mahood, and toprevent it from detracting from public health warnings.

While there is a lot that researchers still don't know aboutmarijuana, it's not a benign substance and there are health risks,said Rebecca Jesseman, a senior policy adviser at the CanadianCentre on Substance Abuse, which supports plain packaging.

The inhalation of any hot vapour into the lungs is harmful,while edible products have been linked toover-consumption and increased emergency room visits in Colorado andWashington, where marijuana is legal, she said.

"It's much easier to be more restrictive from the outset andthen loosen the restrictions as you learn, than it is to start outwith looser regulations and try to make them more stringent," shesaid.

Producers want to 'establish' brands

Cam Battley, executive vice-president at Aurora Cannabis, said hewould never call a psychoactive substance completely benign. But hesaid marijuana is more benign than alcohol or tobacco.

"There are millions of Canadians who purchase cannabis. What thefederal government is trying to do is get people to switch over fromthe illegal and unregulated market to the regulated market," hesaid.

"If they want to do that, it makes sense to allow us to statewho we are, to establish our brands, to justify why it makes sensefor consumers to go through the legal system instead of going tosomebody they know in the neighbourhood."

In terms of advertising, Battley said he believes that cannabisshould be treated essentially the same as liquor, a sector wherecompanies cannot show people using the product in commercials ortarget underage individuals.

The federal task force recommended that plain marijuana packaging be allowed to include the company name, strain name, price, amountsof psychoactive ingredients and warnings.

Different to liquor marketing?

But that information isn't enough to ensure people can buy theproduct they want, said Mark Zekulin, president of Tweed, asubsidiary of Canopy Growth, the largest of Canada's publicly tradedmarijuana companies.

"If you try to compare five different whiskies, they're allgoing to be 35 per cent alcohol or 40 per cent alcohol, but at theend of the day they're all very different," he said.

"Cannabis isprobably more diverse."

A ban on branding and advertising could create a more levelplaying field between large licensed producers and smaller "craft"growers, said Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at SimonFraser University's Beedie School of Business.

But Meredith said it would be a problem for the federalgovernment if it allows marketing of liquor but not cannabis.

Theargument that producers need branded packaging and advertising inorder to lure users from the illegal market has some merit, headded.

"You're not going to buy my product if you don't know itexists," he said.

"The whole idea of branding, developed hundreds of years ago,was because 10 of us made a product. Nine of us did a lousy jobmaking it. One guy did a good job making it. People who were usingthe product wanted to know which guy was doing it."