Canada is home to a very active commercial legal cannabis market, offering insight into the opportunities and challenges posed by rapid cannabis commercialization under a hybrid regulatory model. This environmental scan provides a descriptive snapshot of available cannabis products, modes of consumption, and their advertised product potencies. Researchers extracted cannabis product type, mode(s) of consumption, and drug (THC, CBD) potency information from the online inventories of ten large Ontario, Canada cannabis retailers. Products and modes were categorized according to Canadian Cannabis Survey (CCS) categories where applicable. Ontario retailers sell cannabis products including dried flower, hash/hashish, oils, vape pens, concentrates, edibles, beverages and topicals. Drug potencies varied within and across product types and were reported in non-standardized units. Modes of consumption included inhalation (smoking/vaping/dabbing of a range of flower and concentrate products), oral ingestion (eating, drinking), mucosal absorption (sublingual, vaginal) and topical, transdermal applications. We identified new products, terms, and features (e.g. multimodal products), not described in resources informed by the CCS. Ontario’s hybrid cannabis retail environment demonstrates substantial product and labeling diversity. These findings underscore the importance of adaptable surveillance frameworks capable of capturing evolving products, modes, and potency reporting practices. This scan offers a structured, replicable approach to monitoring cannabis product and mode trends in a rapidly evolving legal market context and may inform regulatory and public health discussions internationally. Not applicable.
Noël et al. (Thu,) studied this question.