Nova Scotia cannabis users concerned over 'excessive' plastic packaging

Some Canadians are discovering smoking cannabislegally comes wrapped in a whole lot of plastic.

NovaScotianswho have purchased legal cannabis through the province's stores have been taking to social media, surprised their paper bagsof pot are filled with so muchpackaging.

GregMacLeansays he was in disbelief when hebought a small portion of marijuana on the first day of legalization at a Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation store in Antigonish, N.S.

"I took it home, and opened it all out and laid out all the packaging," he said. "That's when I realized how excessive it really was for just four grams of weed. It's too much."

Each different productcame wrapped in several layers of packaging, he said.

"I mean, a baggie has been doing the trick for years and year and years now," he said.

Health Canada sets packaging rules

TheNSLC, which is the only body in Nova Scotia licensed to sell cannabis,says retailers aren'tin charge of packaging.

Instead, Health Canada has set rules around how marijuana must be packed for sale.

Health Canada says packaging must be tamper-resistant and child-resistant. It must preventcontamination and keepcannabis dry.

But it's up to the provinces and licensed producers to decide how they'll specifically adhere to those regulations.

Producersfind proper packaging proving difficult

Getting packaging that fits those requirementhas been no easy feat for licensed producers, according to Edwin Jewell, the president and CEO of Canada's Island Garden in Charlottetown. It supplies cannabis to P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.

"Forour company right now, getting theappropriatepackaging here on time and the labels to go with it hasbeen the major challenge our company has had over the last two months," he said.

"This part of the industry is extremely new.We've literally only been at a few days," Jewell said.

Jewell sayslicensed cannabis sellers are also being asked to adhere to safety regulations that don't apply to alcohol producers.

"If you take into the fact that it has to be child-proof, and you compare that to a bottle of hard liquor that you could buy at any province in Canada, any kid could screw the cap off a bottle of hardliquor," he said.

"The standards for us are set higher than that. We have to have child-proof caps, it's bulky, itadds costand adds packaging, but to Health Canada's point, they're trying to set the bar fairly high at the start to make sure things go well, and I understand that," he said.

Inthe future, Jewell says he believes hisand other companies will be looking at how to reduce packaging.

"There's no questions we'll do better going forward, but you have to start somewhere."