Canada

I always thought the hypocrisy between alcohol and cannabis packaging is ridiculous. If cigarettes and cannabis need to be heavily restricted in terms of having simple, plain packaging with health warnings, anything for sale that can cause health issues should be subject to the same restrictions.

Because those health warnings are meaningless to begin with. We know it's bad for us, we don't need a nanny state to hold our hands at the same time.

Don't forget sugar too!

The answer is in the article: “ I don’t want to say that there are necessarily equivalent health risks,”

Alcohol is a massive tax revenue in pretty much everywhere in the world, but especially here in Canada. It's pretty obvious when you see the difference in price of a beer here compared to the states, as 90% of that difference is purely taxes. Hell, you can tell the difference between the beer/wine costs in Ontario vs in Quebec. There's a reason why people in Ottawa and Gatineau constantly cross the boarder to buy their poison of choice.

That said, there's also the fact that when the States tried to ban it, they basically created some of the richest criminals in the world in like a single year. Alcohol is so ingrained into modern society that people riot over it.

Tobacco is a comfort luxury that pretty much anybody can get off of with some effort. Alcohol is a crutch that far too many people use to avoid going to some pretty dark places.

No one recreationally smokes the same way that people might drink every once in a while.

You also have a lot of money spent by various alcohol manufacturers to keep alcohol from being treated like tobacco. If anything, drinking went up a lot with millennials.

Because the alcohol industry is still profitable enough for special treatment.

Meanwhile cannabis beverages are required to have:

-Nutrition facts including calories, sugar, etc.

-Gigantic yellow warning with random health warning (e.g., don't use if pregnant)

-Huge red stop sign cannabis leaf logo

-KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN

-Big pain in the ass plastic childproof thing

None of these required on a can of beer.

From a harm reduction perspective, it's a massive failure. Many cannabis beverages have very low nearly zero calories, sugar-free. For your physical health they are almost certainly less harmful than alcohol and I know many people would enjoy them as an alternative to alcohol.

We have faced a similar failure in harm reduction strategy regarding vaping versus tobacco. I think in both cases it's a result of vested interests (tax revenue, lobbying, don't know) trumping what is best for people.