OPINION: Canada’s legal cannabis system has an access problem hiding in plain sight

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Eight years after cannabis legalization, Canadians seeking CBD for health-related reasons are still caught between two systems that weren’t built for them.

In the recreational market, non-intoxicating products and the people looking for them have been squeezed to the margins of a retail system that rewards high THC and fast sales. Shelf space goes to what moves: an August 2026 review of Ontario’s cannabis catalogue found that just 1.2% of listings were THC-free. OCS data also shows that roughly 80% of new listings are phased out within a year.

The medical system offers clinical oversight, but it has thinned out on both sides: fewer patients are using it and fewer practitioners are participating. Medical registrations fell 57% between 2020 and 2025 (from 377,000 to 161,000). Over the same period, the number of practitioners fell by more than half (from 8,500 to 4,200).

Legal availability is not the same as meaningful access.

I experienced the access gap first hand about a year and a half ago, when I went through the medical cannabis system during treatment for stage 3 colon cancer.

It took about six weeks to get a medical authorization, but that delay was only one friction point in a cumbersome process. First, I had to find a clinic. Then I had to get through the intake process, speak with a practitioner, explain what I was dealing with and determine what product might be appropriate. Even after authorization, I was largely on my own to navigate medical platforms, find the right formulation and figure out where it was actually available.

I knew the industry. I understood the system. I knew where to look. And it was still a challenge.

My mother would not spend six weeks navigating that process. She would ask me or my sister what to buy, and we would start looking for it on her behalf.

Access gap

That is what an access gap looks like in real life.

The route may exist, but when it is difficult to find, cumbersome to navigate and leaves people to piece together the final steps on their own, many will look for another way to meet their needs.

Often that search starts online, where polished websites can look every bit as legitimate as regulated sellers. That creates one of legalization’s unintended consequences: someone looking for a health-oriented, non-intoxicating product can end up outside the regulated system buying from unlicensed sellers without even realizing it. The federal government’s own review of the Cannabis Act found that the illicit market “remains entrenched,” with unlicensed retailers continuing to operate online.

That’s a problem for more than one reason. When someone buys outside the legal market, they also step outside the regulatory framework that protects them. Licensed cannabis products have regulated ingredients, reliable potency, and proper labelling. For someone making a health-related decision, knowing that a product was produced and tested within a regulated system is critical for trusting what they purchase.

This is not necessarily where we expected to find ourselves with CBD. There was a strong expectation that CBD would eventually sit closer to a conventional health-product or pharmacy model rather than remain entirely inside the cannabis framework. In 2025, Health Canada formally consulted on a potential pathway for certain CBD health products to be sold without a prescription. When Health Canada published its 2025–2027 Forward Regulatory Plan in December of last year, that pathway was no longer on it.

Other countries take different approach

Other countries have taken a different approach. In the U.K. and Australia, some CBD products can be accessed through health-retail or pharmacy settings. Those models show that non-intoxicating cannabinoids do not have to sit in the same lane as other cannabis products.

I hope Canada gets there too, but people are making decisions about these products today.

Until a different route exists, the question is how to make the framework we already have easier to navigate. Health Canada’s existing medical system is the one consistent route available to us, so that is where we decided to build Kinloch.med, an online medical cannabis platform focused exclusively on non-intoxicating cannabinoid products. It brings clinical intake, nurse practitioner review, medical authorization where appropriate, and product access together in one process. The point is to keep the clinical oversight and make the process less cumbersome.

Kinloch.med is one response within the system Canada has today. The larger question is what that system should become. Canada does not need to rethink legalization. It needs to keep evolving the channels legalization created.

Legalization answered whether Canadians could access cannabis legally and where. Eight years later, the next question is whether those channels actually fit the different reasons Canadians use cannabinoids.

– Ed Collins is Chief Executive Officer of Kinloch Brands Ltd., the company behind Kinloch.med, a Health Canada-licensed online platform providing clinician-guided access to non-intoxicating cannabinoid products.

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