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Cannabis product labels help first-time consumers chose wisely

Legal weed means government labels on Qbud Cannabis items
GuelphToday Spotlight image_Qbud Cannabis_Jan2021

You know it’s finally legal to purchase. You’ve heard all about its medical and recreational benefits. Now, you’ve made the decision to try it for yourself. The problem is, as a consumer unfamiliar with the cannabis family of products, you don’t know your Green Kraken from your Godfather OG – or even what that means! 

Don’t stress. Like other consumable consumer products, there is a wealth of information available on legal retail cannabis products. And, like other products controlled and sold with government approval, cannabis comes with standardized labels that help you understand what you’re buying. Before you can make your first cannabis purchase, however, you need to know this: there are a lot of different types of cannabis and related products from which to choose. 

“We have a large variety of both accessories and cannabis products,” said Griffin Kennedy, who serves as shift manager and professional “budtender” at Qbud Cannabis, one of the newest cannabis dispensaries in Guelph. “In terms of cannabis products specifically, we sell about 750 varieties. With the accessories, we offer about 1,000 products in total.”

Given the number of cannabis strains available, making that first purchase choice can seem like a daunting task. However, Kennedy said cannabis is no different than a typical product category listed with the LCBO. The various brands of rye whiskey, for example, come in different flavours, with different compositions, varying levels of alcohol content and aging process, and vast differences in the length of time each product is stored before being sold. A 20-year-old whiskey is much different than a five-year-old whiskey, which accounts for different tastes and different price points. Many different factors are also involved in the production of cannabis, which makes reading and understanding labels all the more important prior to purchasing. 

“Standardized labels include the THC total and the Parts Per Milligram,” said Kennedy. “The THC total is what you look at to determine the concentration of your marijuana. That’s like the alcohol equivalency on your LCBO label. The Parts Per Milligram unit is the individual THC contained in the individual consumption amount.”

Another important factor to consider when buying cannabis is the strain of cannabis you’re looking to buy. While many cannabis producers may produce the same strain, the variations in the way it is grown and harvested can result in significant differences in the end product. 

“A good example of this is a company like Broken Coast,” explained Kennedy. “They’ll have strains like Pink Kush, and their name for it is Savary. As a company, they named it Savary so they can market their own version of the strain.”

Kennedy said other elements important to the labelling of retail cannabis products include CBD and terpene content levels. 

“CBD is your non-psychoactive part of cannabis. This is usually the secondary factor people look at when purchasing cannabis. The majority of people are looking at the benefits of cannabis from the non-psychoactive side of things. So in a product like Pink Kush, the variances will be different CBD and THC percentages, and then the terpene percentages.”

Like other products in Canada, cannabis includes bilingual labels and all the standard information required by the Government of Canada for legal retail. That said, Kennedy says it is important for new consumers coming into Qbud for the first time to seek assistance from staff.

“I would say that because marijuana is a psychoactive drug, at the end of the day it’s always best to talk to someone first, especially someone who has had experience with the product you’re looking at. Reading up online isn’t always a great start. If you talk to a budtender, they’ll be able to give you a better gauge based on their own experience with the product.”

Find out more about the various cannabis products available at QBud Cannabis. Visit them at Qbud.ca, 128 Wyndham Street North in Guelph, or call 519-763-7837.