Legal & Regulation
New Laws in Quebec Prohibit Cannabis Use Under Age 21, Says No to Smoking in Public
- The previous laws allowed adults over age 18 to consume cannabis.
- The new age laws will not go into effect until the start of 2020.
Canada made the recreational use of marijuana a legal activity last year in October. However, the regulations surrounding this change have slowly been evolving, only recently allowing the introduction of edibles into the market. Now, according to reports from Global News, Huffington Post, and others, Quebec is making some changes, raising the age of cannabis consumption to age 21. Along with the changes to the age of cannabis use, Quebec has decided that public smoking will be illegal.
Compared to other laws on cannabis use, Quebec’s new legislation is the most restrictive of any government in the country. The laws will go into effect this coming Saturday, though the law states that cities are allowed to make their own rules about the public areas in which consumers can smoke. However, the law requires that no children can be in the public area where the user smokes.
The laws regarding age will not go into effect until January 1st, 2020, though the previous government had stated that the legal age of cannabis consumption was 18. While the efforts are meant to protect the still-developing brains of young consumers, according to junior health minister Lionel Carmant, a group in Quebec believes that the law will create circumstances for consumers that leads them to the black market.
The group, the Quebec Association of the Cannabis Industry (AQIC), is an organization of growers, and they also state that that Bill directly contradicts the goal of legalization, which was to provide the public with controlled products to avoid the black market. A critic of the industry, André Fortin, jested that Carmant’s actions were “securing the financial future of organized crime.”
