Health Minister Petitpas Taylor says new Canada Food Guide creators were not influenced by industry groups
Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor says she was lobbied by industry groups on the newly-released Canada Food Guide, but says the people who created it were not. “The people who put together the Food Guide did not receive any meetings from lobby groups at all,” Ms. Petitpas Taylor (Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe, N.B.) said in a wide-ranging sit-down interview […]
Personalized medicine is the future of health care
More than 90 per cent of new pharmaceutical compounds don’t make it out of clinical trials. The stratospheric failure rate, plus the need for rigorous safety regulations, makes drug development expensive—more than $2.8-billion for each new drug, according to some research. It’s small wonder that buying drugs is expensive. The federal government is consulting on […]
Just price for drugs: the eleventh hour
The concept of “Just Price” goes back to medieval scholastic economic thinking, which was dominant for 500 years. To ensure that the price is just, authorities had to determine that the merchant was not exploiting other people’s misery by charging excessive price and inducing dearth (caristia inducatur). People should make profit by serving others, not […]
Health Policy Briefing
CBD: Regulating this cannabis product as recreational is risky business
The two most well-known compounds in cannabis are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). THC is the compound that gets you high. CBD does not. We know that since medical access to cannabis was first introduced in 2001, Canadians have faced challenges finding health professionals who support their interest in medicinal cannabis. As a result, on […]
Vegetarians, carnivores, and technology
“Right now, growing cells as meat instead of animals is a very expensive process,” said Yaakov Nahmias, founder and chief scientist of Future Meat Technologies, an Israel-based startup. But it will get cheaper, and it probably will be needed. Global population is heading for 10 billion by 2050. (Current world population: 7.7 billion.) Average global […]
Canadians and cannabis, by the numbers
Personal use 4.4 million—number of Canadians who consumed cannabis in 2017 14.8—percentage of Canadians who consumed cannabis in 2017 5.4 million—number of Canadians expected to want to purchase legal cannabis in the fourth quarter of 2018 1.7 million—number of Canadians expected to continue to buy illegal cannabis in the fourth quarter of 2018 15—percentage of […]
What’s next on the cannabis-legalization road?
Repealing close to a century of laws prohibiting the use of cannabis has not been without challenges. That’s no surprise to anyone familiar with the process of developing and implementing public policy. At only three months in, we have only begun to implement the Cannabis Act. The status of retail sales most clearly illustrates this […]
Liberals rolled the dice on legalization, now we’re paying the price
Last October, Canada became the first country after Uruguay to legalize recreational marijuana. To discuss some of the current policy considerations post-marijuana legalization, it is helpful to look back over this last year. It was almost one year ago that the Senate began an intensive study of Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, with five Senate […]
Industry players call for regulatory tweaks as empty shelves harsh retailers’ buzz
Some industry experts say the Canadian government’s legal pot regime can be tweaked to help address immediate supply concerns, but the federal minister in charge of overseeing the regulatory system said a national cannabis supply shortage isn’t to blame for unstocked retail shelves in parts of Canada. In an email interview with The Hill Times, […]
