Adding to the difficulty are Health Canada regulations that prevent medical marijuana producers from making health claims in their advertising materials — rules which also apply to the broader pharmaceutical industry.

Canadian cannabis producers have used a variety of strategies to change perceptions about the drug, including moving away from the street names typically used to identify strains.

Mettrum, Bowmanville, Ont.-based grower, uses a colour-coded spectrum — red being the strongest, yellow the mildest — to identify each product's strength and other characteristics.

"We came up with a responsible dialogue for talking about cannabis that doctors would want to use, versus talking about strains like purple kush or super lemon haze," says Mettrum's CEO Michael Haines.

Tokyo Smoke doesn't sell cannabis in Canada yet, but the company is on the cusp of launching a line of four marijuana strains south of the border, titled "Go," "Relax," "Relief" and "Balance" — names chosen to appeal to the so-called creative class.

"It's always funny for me to think of sophisticated intellectuals smoking strawberry-cheesecake branded cannabis," says Gertner.

Another strategy employed by cannabis producers has been to promote the drug to physicians in a bid to boost patient numbers.

Jordan Sinclair, communications manager at Ontario-based grower Tweed, says that while talking to doctors is important, producers also need to find ways to differentiate themselves from the competition.

One way that Tweed, a subsidiary of Canopy Growth Corp., has set out to do that is by partnering with rapper Snoop Dogg in a deal announced last month.

"There's lots of different producers in Canada, and we're all growing a pretty similar product," says Sinclair. "You want to make sure that people see you as a compelling choice."

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By Alexandra Posadzki, The Canadian Press