Canopy Growth, Canada’s biggest, most aggressive Cannabis grower, has unveiled its new line of Cannabis edibles and drinkables, which will hit the market this coming year. Canopy is making up for time lost due to delays in the launch of legal Cannabis in Canada.
The ‘premium’ brand of Canopy Growth Dark Chocolate,
infused with 5 mg of THC per wafer…
People were skeptical when Canopy Growth took over the old Hershey’s Chocolate Factory in Smiths Falls and converted its cavernous spaces to legal Weed grow-ops. The Falls is a small, conservative town in the middle of farming country about an hour west of Ottawa, Ontario, and folks were understandably skeptical about something they neither understood or liked all that much.
But the new comer has so far done well, in spite of some recent setbacks due to falling Cannabis stock prices and a major backlog of stock – partly due to the fact that Canadians didn’t go ape for Weed when it finally became legal for recreational use last spring, continuing to consume about as much as they had before, when their stone of choice was an illegal black-market product. Either you’re into it, or you’re not.
Cannabis 2.0
Now, with the green light just weeks away for retailers to start selling Cannabis edibles and drinkables, Canopy has unveiled its début line of Cannabis-infused beverages and candy products.
On the drinkable side, the company will go out with several beverage lines, appealing to different style of Cannabis consumption. ‘Tweed’ brand Ready to Drink (RTD) fizzy flavours include Penelope and Tonic containing 2 mg of THC and 1.5 mg of CBD, Bakerstreet and Ginger Ale and Houndstooth and Soda, both containing 2 mg of THC per can – all named after the proprietary Canopy strain of Cannabis that goes into them.
A partnership with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg has resulted a line of Cannabis Pop drinks under the banner of the latters’ brand, HousePlant. The first two flavours will be Lemon and Grapefruit, both containing 2.5 mg of THC per 355 mL can.
Canopy is also marketing a line of naturally flavoured, refreshing Seltzer-like Sparkling water Beverages, under the Quatreau brand. They’re infused mainly with CBD, the therapeutic extract of Cannabis, not the psycho-active one, and are targeted at wellness enthiusiasts and they come in two strengths. The first four flavours are Quatreau Cucumber & Mint, and Quatreau Passion Fruit & Guava, each containing 20 mg of CBD, as well as Quatreau Ginger & Lime, and Blueberry Acai, each containing 2 mg CBD and 2 mg THC per can.
There’s also a Cola-like brew called Deep Space. It’s a dark-coloured quaff with a bold, full flavour that comes in a 222 mL can and contains 10 mg of THC per serving, the maximum level of THC permitted by Health Canada.
And, if you’d prefer to spike your own favourite Beverages with THC, there’s a line of distilled Cannabis ‘mixers’, under the ‘Tweed’ brand name. They’ll come in 150 ml bottles each intended to provide 5 ‘shots’.
How sweet it is
Canopy has been working hard the past few months to build, test and perfect its state of the art Cannabis-infused Chocolate factory. The first products to come off the line will include Bean and Bud and Tokyo Smoke Dark Chocolates, containing different amounts of THC, and Tweed Milk Chocolate, which will contain about half-and-half CDB and THC.
And that’s just the beginning
Providing the new Cannabis edibles catch on, there will be more products and new flavours at regular intervals. Canopy and its competitors are hoping the release of Cannabis edibles across Canada will help overcome their inventory logjam and get their revenues streaming again. I predict that folks who now use Cannabis will like the new edibles, but that few folks who haven’t been using Cannabis right along will be interested. And I hope that folks don’t use these eazy-to-take Cannabis products carelessly or indiscriminately. I don’t want to be on the road when someone on Deep Space and/or Bean and Bud decides to show off their driving skills.
~ Maggie J.