The regulatory body Health Canada has announced a drastic increase in the possession limit for marijuana beverages.

Since Canada legalized marijuana in 2018, the possession limit for marijuana-infused beverages has been 2.1 liters, or around 70 ounces. Health Canada has announced that effective immediately this limit has been increased to 17.1 liters, or 578 ounces. To put it into comparative terms, this is an increase from five standard-sized cans of soda, to 48.

According to Health Canada the change “would correct an unintended consequence of the current equivalency, which restricts the possession and sale of beverages to a greater extent than other forms of cannabis.”

Health Canada also announced the following changes:

• Eased the process for conducting human marijuana trials, making it much easier to gain approval while  maintaining appropriate public health and safety controls. Specifically, the move “exempts nontherapeutic research on cannabis involving human participants from clinical trial requirements, where that research is conducted under a cannabis research license.”
• Allows analytical testing license holders and government laboratories to “produce, distribute, and sell reference standards and test kits.” This move is designed to increase access to cannabis testing materials
• Loosen the educational qualifications for the Head of Laboratory, a position that is required for an analytical testing license.

“This is a very significant victory and right along the lines of what we’ve been pressing for,” says George Smitherman, CEO of industry group Cannabis Council of Canada (C3) “We’ve been engaged on this issue since I first arrived here in 2020.”