Walk down the streets of Toronto and you’d never think vaporizers were illegal, but it turns out they may remain illegal for longer than expected.

Written by Jordana Colomby

It’s a discrete and easy solution to smoking that’s completely taken over the city. But just because it’s easy to use doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to get. Canada announced its plan to legalize cannabis in April 2017, and since then, it’s been an emotional roller coaster for cannabis users.

The initial announcement promised new legislation by Canada Day 2018, which got everyone excited. Unfortunately, Canadian hopefuls were let down when the government announced legalization would be pushed back until later in the summer. On top of the delay, people also started to realize that legalization won’t be as all-encompassing as once thought. Edibles and concentrated oils won’t be legal right away. Instead, they’ll hit the market about a year after the initial cannabis legalization.

Health and wellness through Cannabis

It’s bad news for many cannabis users and companies because vaporizer concentrate won’t technically be legal for at least another year. Josh Campbell, president of dosist, has been at the Canadian Senate advocating for the legalization of all cannabis products so his own product, which uses a concentrate, can hit the market.

Dosist doesn’t consider itself a cannabis company. They see themselves as a health and wellness company, which utilizes the benefits of cannabis to cure common issues. Their sleek pens are like futuristic e-cigarettes: slim enough to slip into your pocket and completely unintimidating.

The aptly named product is all about controlling the dose and controlling the outcome. When the company started out, they wanted to find the core reasons people use cannabis so they could address those issues. “Mass media would have people believe [Cannabis] is simply about intoxication, which is not correct,” Campbell says. There are four main reasons people use cannabis: “To be more calm, to be more relaxed, sleep, and pain management,” Campbell explains. And the fifth reason Campbell points to is sexual health.

Dosist took this research and developed a strain agnostic product that does exactly what it says it’s going to do. Dosist’s six unique blends target those issues exactly: calm, sleep, relief, arouse, bliss, and passion.

Using CO2 extraction and pesticide-free products, they pull out the CBD, the THC and the terpenes, and then re-formulate them back together. That way, when people try the product in California or Toronto (soon, hopefully), they’ll get the same experience every single time, which is nearly impossible to replicate with smoking or edibles.

E-cigarettes vs. Vaporizers

Because of dosist’s commitment to health and consistency, their site has an outbound link to each individual lab test result. They want their customers to trust the product without having to worry about harmful side effects. And dosist only uses responsibly grown cannabis locally from California, where the pens are currently available. When the product moves to Toronto, it will be locally sourced from Canada.

The hardware ensures user safety, too. “Every other vaporizer on the market is based on an e-cigarette platform, which uses the same technology as a toaster,” Campbell explains. Most of the cannabis’s benefit is lost with these technologies, but dosist pens ensure the oil heats to the perfect temperature each time so that natural healing properties of cannabis can be used to their utmost potential.

With technology they can rely on, customers can count on dosist to conquer the key problems plaguing their everyday lives. “We want to serve anyone who has a need for better health,” says Campbell. That includes the 20-year-old veteran who just returned home with PTSD or the 80-year-old grandmother in desperate need of pain relief.

A lot of people are trading in their alcohol and prescription medicines for a dosist pen, according to Campbell. “You have a 35-year-old new mom who drives a Volvo and is trading her glass of Chardonnay to have this at night instead.” Cannabis carries a bad reputation and it can seem out of reach for some demographics, but that’s why Campbell stresses that cannabis is such a small part of the product. dosist is about giving people a safe and tamper-proof way to cope; it just so happens the main ingredient is cannabis.

No grey area

With so many vapes on the black market in Toronto, dosist could start sales and probably do quite well, but that’s not how Campbell wants to do business. Canada is on its way to change, already having revamped to laws around vaporizers. But the concentrate needed for those vaporizers are being legalized just yet.

Campbell plays by the rules, so you won’t see dosist on Canadian shelves until cannabis concentrate is completely legalized, and he’s pushing for that day to come soon so consumers can start reaping the rewards of this natural medicine as soon as possible. “It’s all available, it’s all there,” he says. “We’re burying our heads in the sand if we say it’s not.” Campbell says that if the government’s true mandate is to stamp out the black market and protect kids, the best thing they can do is approve it right away and give it to Health Canada for regulation.

We’ve yet to see if this will be the case.