The post-legalization world has been…interesting, to say the least. You really get a good glimpse into how wild a lawyer’s work can be when you follow all the threads that make up the framework of our new, legal cannabis world. One of these threads is the sudden prevalence of CBD in, well, everything. People are really excited about CBD, one of the compounds found within cannabis; CBD stands for cannabidiol. People are excited about it because it doesn’t get you high – there’s no psychoactive element to it. People will tout all kinds of benefits to CBD – it helps with anxiety! It helps with depression! It alleviates pain! These benefits are not well studied, but we’re not here to talk about whether or not CBD is effective – we’re here to talk about it’s legality.

CBD is regulated in the same way that THC is for retail sale; it’s considered a cannabis product. When you go to a coffee shop with CBD lattés, a barber shop with CBD shampoo, when you buy CBD cooking oil – it’s all being sold to you illegally. A lot of shop owners don’t realize this because, as we noted above, it doesn’t get you high – so people don’t think it’s regulated. They’re wrong; you can only purchase CBD from a licensed dispensary.

The illegality of what they’re doing is further compounded by the fact that almost all CBD products are edible. As it stands in Canada, you can make your own edibles with marijuana you acquire – but you can’t actually sell edibles. That means that if you see CBD gummies at your local dispensary, they’re selling illegally, because edibles aren’t legal to sell. You also can’t purchase CBD edibles made by your friends. You can, however, make your own CBD products and consume them, and you can give these products to your friends for free, in much the same way you can share legally purchased cannabis with whoever you please (so long as they’re of legal age).

Here’s where things get even trickier. There’s no law that says you can’t have CBD in your system while you’re driving; there is, however, a law that says you can’t have THC in your system while driving (for good reason). When you’re getting CBD from a non-dispensary, there’s no way of knowing exactly how much CBD is in the product, nor is there any clear way of knowing if there’s any THC. You might consume a CBD product, assuming it doesn’t have THC, only later to learn that it does, at the end of a roadside test!
All of this to say, you should be incredibly wary about purchasing CBD products from unlicensed dispensaries, and even more wary about driving after consuming such products. In circumstances where you are pulled over and charged with impaired driving after consuming a CBD product, it’s good to have a Winnipeg drug and DUI lawyer on your side; the best defense in this new, post-legalization world is someone who has been working DUI cases for years.