Now that cannabis is fully legalized and regulated in Canada, people have someone to sue when something with a product goes wrong.
And so, with the Cannabis Act taking effect last October, it wasn’t going to be long before someone brought legal action against some organization in the young industry.
It appears the first such case in B.C. involves a bit of confusion between THC, the stuff that gets you high, and CBD, a non-psychoactive component of the cannabis plant that researchers are learning has various health benefits.
According to a statement of claim, the provincial government’s B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch and B.C. Cannabis Stores sold a Kamloops woman a cannabis product that was labelled as low in THC and high in CBD but which apparently contained the opposite of that description.
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“The defendants failed to warn the plaintiff of the dangers of this product,” it reads. “it was mislabelled at the time of purchase.”
The plaintiff, Kimberly Webster, is a student at Thompson Rivers University. In the notice of claim, she says she ingested the product without intending to get high, and that it impaired her for a time during which she had intended to study for midterms. The mislabelled product therefore affected her grades, Webster claims.
The province has yet to respond and the plaintiff’s claims have not been proven in court.
