Hey there folks! I hope everyone is keeping warm and surrounding themselves with good vibes as 2023 kicks off. This has definitely been a year (2022) for the records books, with changes come at us fast and hard. Change is not always bad news though, as exemplified by the recent changes to the regulation of Cannabis beverages that render them far more practical to buy. This is because Health Canada has reconsidered and reclassified how they’re gauging the amount of dry flower that goes into making a single beverage. The end result is a chance for customers to buy far more beverages at one time, thus making them a far more worthwhile purchase. This change has prompted a lot of our customers to ask, what does cannabis equivalency mean and how does it work in products that contain distillates or extracts? So, let’s throw on our learning caps on and see if we can clear the air around cannabis equivalence.
How it’s broken down
When we talk about dry herb equivalency what we’re really discussing is the amount of dried, whole cannabis flower that a product contains. This is not a limit on THC or any other cannabinoids, but instead a limit placed on the volume of the plant itself as it appears in a particular product with an upper limit of 30 grams. When it comes to buying cannabis in its whole flower for, the math is easy since it’s a one-to-one ratio. 3.5 grams of flower is….well 3.5 grams of flower. Where things start to get interesting and a bit more complicated is when we start getting into other products. For example, infused pre-rolls feature not just single source of dried flower, but is also coated or infused with concentrates like pressed hash or kief to give them some extra potency. So, when calculating the dry herb equivalency, one has to consider the dried flower that went into the infusion. Another great example is the recent changes to beverages, which as I mentioned above have recently gone through some changes. Where before the calculation being used resulted in each beverage averaging around 5 grams of dried flower equivalency, now that number has dropped to 0.622 or lower! A little bit of math goes a long way. Products like vape carts or shatter tend to be lower on the equivalency spectrum due to very little dried flower being used to craft these products, with some of them being below 1 gram. This just goes to show that small amounts of cannabis can go a long way if used efficiently.
Awesome!
That’s right disembodied voice that acts as my springboard for this blog, it is awesome. The dry herb equivalency has been a consistent hurdle for cannabis retailers from the get-go, making it sometimes more difficult to give customers the well options to purchase the quantities of certain products that they require or desire for their personal needs. The change to beverages are the first in what will almost certainly be several amendments that we’ll see made to the limitations set on cannabis by the government. As stigma’s evaporate and more and more people are shopping for regulated cannabis, expect great things to come.
Has all this talk of dry herb made you thirsty? If so, browse through our always growing selection of beverages and take your pick!
