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Law Canada MJ News

@momofthegoons & @just_tHe_fLu The largest medical coverage for cannabis in Canada is the Department of Veterans Affairs, with military and RCMP veterans making up the largest covered group in Canada at present. And the new recreational regime is making it difficult for many people with *and* without coverage to obtain their medications as many LPs are selling out to the larger sales prices in the rec market. This is for both insured users and uninsured patients such as @fluffhead .

Then theres another school of thought relating to chronic endocannabinoid deficiency, suggesting that there isn't any recreational use: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24977967

And then there's the successful Cannabis Substitution Project, which is managed by donations of cannabis from a variety of sources: https://www.vancourier.com/news/can...re-packages-help-opioid-users-kick-1.23209946
 
There are a couple videos that couldn't be embedded in this article. Follow link in title to view.

Canada-wide cannabis shortages could last years, producers warn

The supply shortages that have plagued many provinces in the first month of legal cannabis will likely persist for years, industry insiders say.

Provinces including British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have all reported varying degrees of shortages.

New Brunswick was forced to temporarily close more than half its stores, while the Quebec Cannabis Corporation has reduced its store opening hours to four days a week. Labrador’s only legal cannabis store said it was forced to temporarily close after being without any product for nearly two weeks.

“Some licensed producers… have been unable to deliver the volumes that they had originally committed to,” said Kate Bilney, a spokeswoman for the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch.

Khurram Malik, CEO of the Toronto-based cannabis company Biome Grow Inc., said the lack of supply is due in part to the tough regulations imposed by Health Canada on the country’s 132 licensed producers, and the time required by companies to develop a quality and compliant product.

He said the federal department also took too long to approve licences.

“The rules here are so difficult to grow cannabis — quite frankly more difficult than anywhere else in the world — that if you’re a new licence holder and you’ve never done this before, it’s going to take you a year, year-and-a-half, or two years to get any decent, consistent quality product out the door in any predictable volumes,” said Malik, adding it’s much easier and cheaper to grow in jurisdictions such as California.

“The good thing with that is, yes, it makes things difficult domestically, but the rest of the world looks at us as outright experts in this. They say if you can grow in Canada, you can grow anywhere.”

Malik said he suspects some companies did stockpile cannabis leading up to Oct. 17, but logistics such as packaging and shipping have held up distribution as producers navigate the red tape of a brand new sector.

“There may be empty store shelves right now in various provinces, but there’s product sitting in vaults ready to move.

“That will clean itself out in the coming weeks,” said Malik, whose company has facilities under development in Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

“Once that’s out of the way, then you’re going to have intermittent shortages throughout 2019 and into 2020 as people produce and ship right away.”

Health Canada said it has taken steps to improve the licensing and capacity of producers, including increasing approved production capacity from 185,000 square metres to more than 1.2 million square metres since May 2017.

The department declined a request for an interview. But a statement from spokeswoman Tammy Jarbeau acknowledged that product shortages would likely continue “in the months ahead.”

“As with any new industry where there is considerable consumer demand, we expect there may be periods where inventories of some products run low or, in some cases, run out,” said Jarbeau in an email.

“Health Canada remains confident that there is sufficient supply of cannabis overall to meet market demand now and into the future.”

The department said given the long-standing prohibition of cannabis, there were no established benchmarks to precisely estimate demand levels, or to determine which products would be in high demand.

“As the overall supply chain gains experience in the Canadian marketplace, it is expected that such localized and product-specific shortages will become far fewer in number,” she said.

Brenda and Trevor Tobin, the mother-and-son owners of Labrador City’s High North, said demand at the store currently far outweighs the available supply.

The shop sold all of its cannabis in the first three hours on legalization day, and in the weeks following, products dried up for almost two weeks.

Brenda Tobin said she continues to sell product faster than producers are able to deliver it. She said that has prompted some of her customers to buy cannabis illegally.

“A lot of them have said, ‘Well I guess it’s back to the black market’,” said Tobin. “We hate to hear that, but I’m assuming if they want their product, they’re going to get it one way or the other.”

She said product availability has also been restricted as producers send lists of available products, rather than the shop being able to request certain products, she said.

Authorities in B.C. and Alberta said licensed producers have not been able to deliver on the volumes they had originally committed to, but neither province provided specifics.

“While we forecasted and planned for this level of demand, we did not anticipate the supply challenges,” said Heather Holmen, manager of communications for Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis.

“The shortage of product is a Canada-wide challenge.”

The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation said it received less than 40 per cent of the product it ordered from 14 licensed producers in August, but was able to bring in inventory from a P.E.I. producer days before legalization to help address the shortage.

The shortages meant that three Nova Scotia cannabis stores closed early a few hours early on three occasions during the first week of legalization. There have not been any closures since then.

Cannabis NB said it received 20 to 30 per cent of its order for legalization day. It said 12 of the province’s 20 stores were forced to temporarily close in the last few weeks, but have all since reopened.

“Temporary closures are sometimes required to allow for new inventory to arrive,” Cannabis NB said in an email. “We expect supply levels to eventually normalize, however, the demand is consistent, and supply is a challenge.”

Meanwhile in Ontario — where its online store is the only way to legally purchase recreational cannabis until brick-and-mortar stores are put in place next year — the provincial ombudsman has received more than 1,000 complaints related to delivery delays, poor customer service and issues with billing.

Ontario Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said this week that the online Ontario Cannabis Store was returning to its original delivery time of one to three days, after receiving 200,000 orders since Oct. 17.

Ray Gracewood, chief commercial officer for the New Brunswick-based OrganiGram, said cannabis companies knew it would be a challenge to fulfil the demand during the first few months following legalization, and a shortage was inevitable as producers play catch-up.

“There’s a huge novelty factor and I think it probably has really captured the imagination of Canadians in general,” said Gracewood. “It’s a validation that Canadian consumers are willing to embrace regulated and legalized product.”

Gracewood said Canadian consumers have a whole new world of cannabis products to look forward to, and he expects producers will start developing product niches.

Ottawa has said it is aiming to make edibles containing cannabis and cannabis concentrates legal by next October.
 
No spike in cannabis-impaired driving one month after legalization, data shows

VANCOUVER – Canadian police have not seen a spike in cannabis-impaired driving one month since legalization, but there needs to be more awareness of laws around storing marijuana in vehicles and passengers smoking weed, law enforcement officials say.

The Canadian Press canvassed police forces and provincial and territorial Crowns across the country and while some said it was too early to provide data, others said initial numbers and anecdotal impressions suggest stoned driving isn’t on the rise.

“Even before the legislation we were catching a lot of high school kids because marijuana has seemed to be kind of mainstream forever,” said Sgt. Joe Cantelo of the Kennebecasis Regional Police Force in New Brunswick.

“In our department, there’s certainly no rise in impaired driving by (marijuana).”

Police forces in Vancouver, Regina, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Truro, N.S., and Kensington, P.E.I., all said they hadn’t noticed a significant change in driver behaviour since pot was legalized on Oct. 17.

Cantelo said there were three impaired driving charges in his community over the last few weeks and they were “strictly older adults with alcohol.”

Manitoba RCMP conducted three cannabis-impaired driving investigations in the three weeks since Oct. 17, compared with one such investigation in the three weeks prior to legalization. There were about 50 alcohol-impaired driving charges laid during each of the same periods.

Const. Jason Doucette said Vancouver police have issued 18 violation tickets under provincial cannabis laws since Oct. 17. The majority of traffic-related tickets were issued because pot was not properly stored or passengers were consuming weed in the vehicle.

During one roadblock campaign, he said Vancouver officers noted six events specific to cannabis impairment, which led to four 24-hour driving suspensions.

“As expected, we haven’t seen a dramatic increase in cannabis-related offences,” he added.

Provinces and territories established their own laws around cannabis storage in vehicles, but generally weed must be in closed packaging and out of reach of the driver. Manitoba took a step further and required pot to be in a secure compartment, such as the trunk.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, there have been at least six charges related to open or accessible cannabis in vehicles, RCMP said.

Obviously drivers can’t consume weed, but many provinces, including British Columbia and Ontario, have banned passengers from toking as well. A joint-smoking passenger in Saanich, B.C., was slapped with a $230 fine a day after legalization, police said.

As for cannabis-impaired driving, some police detachments and Crowns don’t track it separately from impairment caused by other drugs or alcohol.

The B.C. Public Prosecution Service said it doesn’t classify impaired-driving charges by intoxicant, but in the three weeks after legalization it approved 43 such charges, while in the three weeks before legalization it approved 52 charges.

Toronto police said they’d had 58 drug-impaired driving incidents in 2018 to date, including two after pot legalization, and 824 alcohol-impaired incidents. That’s compared to 60 incidents of drug impairment in drivers and 1,154 instances of alcohol impairment in all of 2017.

In Halifax and the Northwest Territories, there were no cannabis-impaired driving arrests in the three weeks before or after legalization, while in Nunavut, there were five general impaired-driving charges during both periods.

Sgt. Joyce Kemp said Quebec provincial police made 252 arrests for drug-related driving impairments between Jan. 1 and Sept. 17 of this year, compared to 319 for all of 2017 and 310 in 2016.

“A lot of people seem to think this is something new,” she said. “But the numbers speak (for themselves), we’ve been doing this for quite a few years now.”

Some police detachments, including Edmonton, Regina, Yukon and Nunavut, have purchased or are planning to purchase the federally approved roadside saliva test, the Drager DrugTest 5000, but have not used it in the field. Others have decided to rely on standardized field sobriety tests and drug recognition experts for now.

Kyla Lee, a Vancouver-based lawyer who wants to file a court challenge of the Drager test once it’s used on a driver who wishes to dispute it, said she hadn’t heard of it being used anywhere yet.

She said she’s impressed so far with the police approach to enforcement, particularly in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

“I was worried when the law changed … that this sort of panic around cannabis-impaired driving was going to lead to a number of false arrests and bad investigations. That’s not what I’ve been seeing,” she said.

There still needs to be more awareness among Canadians, especially youth, of the dangers of cannabis-impaired driving, said Andrew Murie, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada.

“The problem we were having, especially with young people with cannabis, is they didn’t see cannabis as dangerous, (we) didn’t see them upholding the same type of behaviours they would around alcohol,” he said.

“We had a problem of perception that it’s less dangerous and that’s the biggest battle we’re fighting right now.”
 
Here is a link to the Canadian Justice Dept. page on Impaired Driving Laws. The portion that pertains to cannabis is below:

Part 1: Drug-impaired driving

Part 1 of the new impaired driving legislation, which introduces new offences for drug-impaired driving, came into force on June 21, 2018.

Prohibited drug concentrations
The legislation creates three new offences for having a prohibited concentration of drugs in the blood within two hours of driving. The levels for THC are at:

  • for the summary conviction offence for 2 nanograms (ng) but less than 5 ng of THC per millilitre (ml) of blood
  • for the hybrid offence for 5 ng or more of THC per ml of blood
  • for the hybrid offence for a combination of 50 milligrams (mg) of alcohol per 100 ml blood + 2.5 ng or more of THC per 1 ml of blood
The regulations setting the prohibited levels of drugs came into force on June 26, 2018. Along with THC, these offences apply for any detectable levels of other impairing drugs including cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD, 6-MAM (a metabolite of heroin), Ketamine, Phencyclidine, and Psilocybin and Psilocin (magic mushrooms). Scientific advice indicates that these drugs are incompatible with safe driving at any level. As well, the level for GHB is 5 mg/L as the body can naturally produce low levels of this drug, and as such, a blood drug concentration of “any detectable level” would not be appropriate for this drug. The law also applies to those with medical authorization for cannabis.

did-eng.jpg


The new legislation makes detecting drug-impaired driving easier by authorizing the following:

  • if police have a reasonable suspicion that a driver has a drug in their body, they may demand an oral fluid sample to test for drug presence at the roadside
  • if they have reasonable grounds to believe an offence has been committed, such as a positive result on an oral fluid test together with other observed factors, police may pursue drug recognition evaluation or take a blood sample
  • police officers trained in drug recognition and evaluation (DRE) are able to provide opinion evidence in court as to whether or not a driver was impaired by a drug, without the need to qualify them as an expert witness in each trial
  • a rebuttable presumption to better link the drug found in the body by the DRE trained officer with the observed signs of impairment at the roadside or while driving. This means that where an evaluating officer has identified a drug type as impairing a driver at the time of testing and that drug type is found by analysis to be in the driver’s body, it will be presumed that the drug was causing impairment at the time of driving
Oral fluid drug screeners
Oral fluid drug screeners can be used by police to detect the presence of some drugs in saliva, including THC, the main impairing component in cannabis. These devices are fast, non-invasive, and accurate. They can detect some or all of THC, cocaine and methamphetamine, the three most common impairing drugs found in Canadian drivers. Police can demand an oral fluid sample if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the driver has drugs in their body based on objectively visible facts, such as:

  • red eyes
  • muscle tremors
  • agitation
  • speech patterns
If a driver tests positive on an oral fluid screening test, the positive result would confirm the presence of the drug and, combined with other signs of impairment observed by the police at the roadside, would provide grounds for the investigation to proceed further either by making a demand for DRE or a blood sample
 

The Netherlands’ master cannabis growers are flocking to Canada


It’s a rare Dutch traveller who hasn’t heard some version of “Amsterdam? I’ve smoked a doob or two there.”

Forty years of coffeeshops in the Netherlands have created Europe’s best known stoner haven. The most famous of those coffeeshops is arguably Green House, which has counted Rihanna, Snoop Dogg and Eminem among its patrons.

Its owner, Arjan Roskam, claims to have 43 cannabis cups to his name—and has dubbed himself “the king of cannabis.” He hunts marijuana strains all over the world to create champion seeds in his Amsterdam lab, but Canada is now his focus.

He’s just one of a number of Dutch consultants bringing their decades of weed savvy to Canada, which legalized cannabis in October.

For Roskam, it means collaborating with pot-giant Canopy Growth, whose market access reaches every Canadian corner, on developing champion marijuana seeds.

And Green House is not alone. Dutch horticulture is making millions selling greenhouses, grow lights and water systems in Canada. The "green brain drain" is hitting hard in the former world weed leader.

“We’ve made a critical mistake to let the marijuana market slip away,” Nicole Maalsté, who’s researching the cannabis industry at Utrecht University, told VICE.

Roskam attests: “Canada and the US have taken over while we’re wrangling over full legalization.”

They’re referring to the Dutch pot paradox: It’s legal to buy cannabis, but illegal to grow more than five plants at a time.

It’s called the “back door problem.” The government regulates what’s going on in the coffee shops, which are allowed to sell a nibble of recreational cannabis and hash, but it has never regulated how coffee shops get their inventory.

It’s telling that the Dutch government has handed out only a single licence for medicinal cannabis production, while Canada has 133 and counting.

The result? A sketchy system that features underground organized crime, as noted in an alarming report by the national police union, de Politie Bond earlier this year.

In the province of Brabant - the “drugs barn of Europe” with 2,5 billion worth of weed production annually, and 19,8 billion of profits from XTC and amfetamine - a national task force has been fighting assassinations, violence, rip deals and money laundering since 2011.

One in five farmers has said to be pressured by gangs into growing weed for them. The contrast with Canada is stark. Since legalization arrived last month, the market can’t keep up with supply shortages reported across the country.

“They’re trailblazer issues and we’ll overcome them,” says Allan Rewak, executive director of the Cannabis Council of Canada. “The great news is: Canadians are willing to buy licenced pot. The market is working.”

Indeed, the sector has ballooned into an industry in which the top 12 Canadian marijuana companies are collectively valued at $55 billion.

Roskam was more than happy to join the party last year when he teamed up with Canopy Growth and Organa Brands to bring his Green House brand to the Canadian retail landscape.

But it’s mainly Dutch horticulture-expertise that’s being sought by Canadians. Greenhouses are created in a jiffy. And at a dazzling size. Some are as large as 400,000 square feet, the equivalent of six soccer fields.

Dutch greenhouse specialists such as Bosman van Zaal, Kubo and Havecon areshipping entire greenhouses to Ontario.

Meteor Systems, a major manufacturer of complete growing systems inside greenhouses, has projected it will be filling more than three million square feet of Canadian growing surfaces with its custom-designed pipes, pumps and plant beds.

“We get huge orders from Canada, we’ve seen it all: Big tomatoes and cucumber parties that are transforming their businesses into weed,” says company marketing manager Laura Rastovac.

Even before the cannabis boom, the Dutch horticultural influence has been a feature in Canada.

“Just drive through Orangeville, (Ontario), it’s surreal how many Dutch farmers and companies you pass,” says Joachim Helms, who trains young Canadian weed growers for Green House. Many of them came in the after-war migrant wave in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

It’s hard to pin down the precise number of Dutch marijuana producers moving west.

“There’s rumours about guys who’ve left their basement to move to Canada,” says Rastovac. But they keep quiet, as there’s a risk of being caught by the police.

Maalsté confirms she’s been in touch with former illegal cultivators who are working as master growers in Canadian facilities.

Meanwhile back home, the Dutch government is taking baby-steps of its own towards legalization. In 2020, a four-year experiment with full legalization will kick off.

Maalsté, who represents almost half of the 576 coffee shops in talks with policy makers, warns that the plan for gradual legalization could have harmful effects.

“It’s risky to break into a self-regulating market with an experiment. If by 2025 the gates to legal weed production are shut down again, hell breaks loose,” she said.

But there’s one thing the Dutch weed industry agrees on: The Netherlands, once the world’s most renowned weed paradise, is late to its own party. And Canada is profiting.
 
APHRIA AND BEYOND: INTO THE ABYSS OF CANNABIS CORRUPTION IN CANADA


A scandal is breaking over the Cannabis world, as giant licensed producer Aphria was the subject of a devastating investigation into a “shell-game” of shady business practices. This article will place these revelations is a historical and political context.



The report by Grego was based on a study can be found here by Hindenburg Research, and should be read in full. So what the Hell is going on? Well, about two days ago on Dec. 03, the short-seller Gabriel Grego gave a talk in New York. His subject was Canadian Licensed Producer behemoth Aphria. It’s the highest-valued LP and has been on a spending-spree lately, buying numerous other companies for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The tl;dr of his talk? Aphria may be using money from small-scale ‘retail’ investors to purchase companies which they control at inflated values. The major shareholders then pocket this cash at the cost of Aphria investors. Grego points out, “money has been flowing from retail investors to Aphria, which has then used the capital to buy “assets” from entities associated with insiders.”



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Aphria has previously been caught in shady deals, offering over $425 million for Nuuvera. “The company later admitted that its executives and directors had undisclosed stakes in Nuuvera prior to Aphria’s acquisition, along with a key deal partner named Andy DeFrancesco”.



Aphria’s response has not inspired confidence. Although insiders bought more than $3 million in stock in the company, they did not address specific charges in the exposè. Much of the scrutiny is focused on Andy DeFrancesco, the major investor in Aphria, who also owns Delavaco Properties Inc.


Aphria, in their rebuttal, claimed that all deals were subject to a fair valuation by Cormark Securities. But this company is connected to Aphria insiders via its Director of Investment Banking, Ron MacMicken, who also sits on the board of Delavaco Properties Inc. Other links to Andy DeFrancesco are evident from MacMicken’s CV. He is “on the Board of Directors at Tolima Gold, Inc., Sintana Energy, Inc.” Mr. Andrew DeFrancesco is the Executive Chairman of the Board of Tolima Gold Inc. and had similar ties with Sintana Energy Inc. before its sale.

As the Hindenberg Research paper claims, the company appears to be self-dealing. The scheme breaks down as such:


We believe Aphria has diverted shareholder assets to insiders through a systematic process:

  1. Aphria insider Andy DeFrancesco sets up or acquires an international company, providing a token justification for an acquisition (e.g., conditional cannabis licenses, a leased facility, purchasing a small existing local business.)
  2. The international company is then purchased by a Canadian shell company under the control of DeFrancesco through his closely held private equity firm, the Delavaco Group.
  3. The shell company agrees to be acquired by Aphria’s ‘sister’ company, Scythian Biosciences, where Vic Neufeld, Aphria’s Chairman/CEO, and DeFrancesco hold key insider roles.
  4. Scythian then sells its stake in the entity to Aphria at a large markup.
  5. As a result, DeFrancesco and unnamed associates get cash and/or Scythian shares, Scythian gets cash and/or Aphria shares, and Aphria’s shareholders get international assets that are essentially worthless.

To put it into common language, Aphria appears to be using the money gained from common Canadians investing in stock to buy their own shell companies that exist only on paper for far more than they’re worth, pocketing the proceeds. Aphria is strongly denying this but the information linking Aphria insiders to companies like Marigold Projects Jamaica Ltd. Aphria claimed, as the Financial Post said, “the company said had obtained a coveted Tier 3 cultivation licence — one of the only licences of its kind to provide spa services using cannabis products — as well as an Argentinian pharmaceutical distributor called ABP and a cannabis producer in Colombia called Colcanna.

Grego and his team claim that site visits in all three countries raised significant questions about the values of the underlying operations.

In search of Marigold’s registered office in Jamaica, for example, the report said they found an abandoned building, one which Marigold’s managing director Lloyd Tomlinson also lists as his personal address.”

As the effects from this scandal begin to ripple outward, most LPs will be reviewing their financial policies. But the real danger is to common Canadian investors, who stand to lose fortunes small and large. Is this a problem in more than one LP? How much money could be lost if this scene is repeated?

This also warrants a deeper look into the structure of legalization. Many advocates are furious as the Federal government has selected winners and losers in the new market. Instead of being a well of innovation, the industry is a convoluted mess of conflicts of interest.

For example, one of the recent additions to the board of Aphria is John Herhalt, who was implicated in a recent scandal involving Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Herhalt was the national "public sector leader" for accounting firm KPMG during a period when the company was caught offering wealthy Canadians access to “tax-free” off-shore accounts. As we have seen from the Panama Papers and other leaks, many trillions of dollars are currently kept illegally in such accounts.

But Justin Trudeau quietly killed an investigation into the malpractices when he was elected, instead hiring Herhalt as the Liberal Party treasurer.

According to the CBC, Herhalt was actually employed by KPMG after being appointed treasurer. “Though Herhalt retired from KPMG in 2013, he told CBC he later returned on contract to the firm in 2016 and remained there until October — five months after he was chosen to oversee the party's finances. To this day, he responds to his KPMG email in communications with The Fifth Estate.” Treasurer is an unpaid, ‘volunteer’ position, as they are quick to point out.. that is, unless you count a potentially lucrative seat on the board of Aphria. John Herhalt is still listed as Liberal Party treasurer as of Dec. 05 2018.

As of this day, too, the Aphria stock price has dropped from a high of around $21 per share to only $5.00. Time will tell if the company survives, but its preferential place in the legal Canadian Cannabis landscape might insulate it from final destruction. Currently investors are out hundreds millions of dollars in value.

Canadians should not accept this. Why was the Cannabis industry was handed to such people, who are unable to actually supply the demand?
Why our RCMP are acting as enforcers for companies that may be built on a foundation of fictional offshore companies and financial corruption?
 
"lawmakers in Ontario hope that having a smaller number of private dispensaries will make it easier for supply to catch up."

Are these people lacking in intelligence...even on the face of it, the above statement makes no sense. Number of outlets will not have an impact on pent up demand except to increase it and frustration with their government's implementation of legal cannabis.

What's wrong with Ontario?



Ontario will limit number of dispensaries allowed within the province
n an about-face from earlier positions, provincial lawmakers in Ontario today announced that it will place a limit on the number of private dispensaries that will be allowed to open in the province. Initially, Ontario planned for a gradual rollout of recreational retail without any limits on the number of private dispensaries. But in an announcement today, lawmakers said they will now cap private dispensaries at 25.
A Change in Policy

Provincial authorities announced the policy change in a statement issued earlier today. In the statement, they said that Ontario will now adopt a “phased approach” in which only a set number of private weed shops will receive licenses.

This is a marked change from earlier plans. In particular, as Canada prepared to legalize weed earlier this year, the Ontario Liberal provincial government said it would not restrict the number of privately-owned dispensaries.

But now, the new approach coming primarily from Ontario’s Progressive Conservative leadership will set a limit on those shops. As reported by Huffington Post, today’s announcement said that Ontario will only give out 25 licenses for privately-owned weed stores.

Additionally, the province plans to select businesses in a lottery. The winners of that lottery will be announced in Jan. 2019, the announcement said.

All of this comes in the lead-up to Ontario’s rollout of privately-owned and operated recreational dispensaries. For now, the Ontario Cannabis Store, a state-run online retailer, is the only place to buy legal recreational weed.

But that’s set to change on April 1, 2019. At that time, the province will allow private weed shops to open. And now, after today’s announcement, there will be a maximum of 25 private shops when that date rolls around.

Responding to Supply Shortages
In explaining the new policy, Conservative lawmakers said the decision is a response to supply shortages. When weed became legal in Canada on Oc. 17, there was massive immediate demand.

So much so, in fact, that many dispensaries had lines out the door. Many dispensaries ended up selling out much faster than anticipated.

Making the shortage even worse, many wholesalers and state suppliers also did not have enough product to keep dispensaries stocked. Now, growers and producers around the country are scrambling to increase production.

Despite this, many experts predict that it could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months before Canada’s supply of weed is able to keep up with demand.

Facing this shortage, lawmakers in Ontario hope that having a smaller number of private dispensaries will make it easier for supply to catch up.

Beyond shortages, Ontario’s recreational weed system has had its fair share of other hiccups. Last month, consumers noticed mislabeled products on the province’s online retailer Ontario Cannabis Store.

Then, a short time later, news surfaced that there had a been a data breach involving Ontario Cannabis Store customers. The breach reportedly occurred when an unauthorized person at the Canadian postal service managed to access a database of customer data.

And most recently, the province was part of a recall of marijuana buds. The move came after consumers in Ontario and British Columbia found mold on their weed.
 
Canada’s strict new impaired driving laws

On December 18, new impaired-driving laws that are stricter than ever before will come into effect. They include harsher penalties, amendments to existing offences and some entirely new offences altogether. You may not have heard about them until now, but you shouldn’t feel bad. There has been virtually no publicity from the government of Canada to make people aware of the new legislation.

That’s why we have decided to tell you what to expect if you get pulled over by a police officer from Tuesday onwards. Regular readers of this blog will know we have previously warned people about the changing impaired-driving landscape as well as other Criminal Code drunk-driving changes. Forgive us for sounding like a broken record, but if we don’t do something to raise awareness then who will?

It is likely that these new rules are going to come in for some constitutional scrutiny but until that happens it is vital you abide by the new legislation. Ignorance is not an excuse. The law is the law and you don’t want to wrongfully incriminate yourself or find yourself in unnecessary trouble. Do the smart thing and make yourself familiar with the new rules and then share this information with your friends and family.

We urge you to tell your friends and family about the changes.



RANDOM BREATH TESTING
Perhaps the biggest change to Canada’s impaired driving laws is that the police can now require a driver to provide a sample of breath at the roadside even without a reasonable suspicion that the driver has alcohol in their body. Previously, police officers had to have a reasonable suspicion – such as the driver smelling of alcohol or admitting drinking– in order to require a person to blow into an Approved Screening Device (ASD). This effectively means officers now have carte blanche to conduct random roadside breath tests on drivers.

Anyone ignorant of this new law who gets pulled over, despite not having touched a drop of alcohol, may believe that unless the police have grounds to suspect they have been drinking, they can refuse the ASD demand. Under no circumstances should you refuse to give a roadside breath sample. Which brings us to the next big change.

INCREASED FINE FOR REFUSAL TO BE TESTED
The mandatory minimum fine for refusing to provide a sample of breath at the roadside will double after December 18, from $1,000 to $2,000. On top of that, anyone who refuses can still expect to receive a one-year driving prohibition and a criminal conviction, even for a first offence.

ESCALATING PENALTIES FOR HIGHER BLOOD ALCOHOL CONTENT
Previously, if you were convicted of alcohol-impaired driving or driving over 0.08 that did not cause bodily harm or death you could expect at least a $1,000 fine, one-year driving suspension and criminal record. After December 18, there will be higher fines if your BAC has reached certain thresholds. The drunker you are, the harsher the punishment.

The escalating scale for penalties for impaired driving can be found here:

Screen-Shot-2018-12-13-at-4.43.49-PM.png



Although there will be higher fines for people who are more over the limit, mandatory minimum penalties for second and third offences stay the same at 30 and 120 days in prison, respectively.

NEW OFFENCES FOR DRUG-IMPAIRED DRIVING
While the existing laws for alcohol-impaired driving are changing, new offences for drug-impaired driving will come into effect for the first time after December 18. This is a direct response to the legalization of cannabis in October but it also includes other drugs such as cocaine and LSD.

The legislation creates new offences for having THC in your blood within two hours of driving. Having between 2 and 5 nanograms (ng) of THC per 1 ml blood is punishable by a $1,000 fine while having 5 ng or more of THC can result in up to 120 days in prison for a third offence or more.

Police across the country will use a device called theDräger DrugTest 5000 to conduct roadside screening for drugs and blood samples can be taken at police detachments.

How much cannabis can you consume and still be under the legal limit? One puff? Two puffs? A whole joint? The answer depends on such things as the THC content of the strain you have consumed. THC can vary a lot so there is no standardized way of knowing how much cannabis will take you over the 2 ng threshold.

Having any trace of drugs like LSD, PCP, ketamine or cocaine while driving will also result in the same mandatory minimum penalties.

Another big change is a new hybrid offence. It will be illegal to have a BAC 50 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood alcohol plus 2.5 ng of THC in 1ml of blood while driving. So even if you are below the limit for alcohol and within the lower bracket for THC, having the two combined will push you into the more serious category.

A summary of the penalties for the new drug-impaired driving offences can be found here:


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MAXIMUM PENALTIES INCREASING
The maximum penalties for impaired driving will also be higher after December 18. For impaired driving causing no bodily harm or death, the highest possible punishment for a summary conviction will increase from 18 months imprisonment to two years less a day. For drivers prosecuted by indictment for the same offence, the maximum prison term will double from five years to 10.

For impaired driving causing bodily harm, the maximum penalty for a conviction by indictment is increasing from 10 to 14 years in prison.

A summary of the maximum penalties after December 18 can be found here:

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WHY WE’RE SHARING CANADA’S NEW IMPAIRED DRIVING LAWS
In light of these changes we are concerned, there will be a lot of drivers who simply don’t know about Canada’s new impaired driving laws come December 18. There will be plenty out there find themselves facing an IRP for refusal to blow or the possibility of a criminal conviction for ASD refusal

We urge you to tell your friends and family about the changes so they are prepared in the event they are selected by police officers for a breathalyzer demand.
 

From the Washington Post. Yet another example of, IMO, how government are the absolute kings of unintended consequences. Now, this is my opinion only, but I think that the reason for this is our politicians are only really good at burnishing their own credentials (and ego) and are not really actually very good at policy.



Canada legalized pot in October. But its black market is still going strong.


MONTREAL — The legal cannabis stores that opened here last fall still look pristine. Curious customers file in, but the shelves they peruse are often bare. Supplies are so short the stores are shuttered three days a week.

A few blocks from one outlet, though, a longtime pot dealer was receiving a stream of text alerts one afternoon this winter, a sign of booming business.

When the government launched Canada’s official recreational-pot market on Oct. 17, it was banking on the idea that many users would prefer to buy legally and that the black market would quickly begin to fade. It says things seem on track, with “early reports of a 65 percent reduction for illegally sourced products,” according to a spokeswoman for the minister in charge of the cannabis file.

But there are also signs things aren’t going as expected.

In a national poll Ipsos conducted for Global News a month after legalization, more than a third of Canadian cannabis users said they were still buying from their regular dealers and hadn’t even tried the legal system. Five illegal sellers in Quebec told The Washington Post their sales are slightly up.

To the black marketeers, the bare-bones legal supplies are “pretty much a running joke,” said David, the busy Montreal dealer, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used to avoid police attention.

Canada legalizes marijuana
Canada becomes the largest country, and only second in the world, to fully legalize recreational cannabis. (Reuters)

He finally saw one of the colorful boxes used as packaging in Quebec’s government-run cannabis stores when a customer showed it to him during a purchase.

“People are buying the containers so they can put their black-market weed in it,” David said.

Many researchers, politicians and investors see the state of the black market as an important gauge of the new policy’s success. But if it doesn’t shrink naturally, Canadian authorities face some tricky questions: Can they force it to shrink? And if their approach proves to have been flawed, is it too late to change course?

“You’ve got to get the timing right,” said Mark Kleiman, a New York University professor and expert on cannabis legalization.

Illegal cannabis sales are notoriously hard to measure. In Washington state, for example, experts’ best estimate six years after legalization is that there’s still “a non-trivial black market,” Kleiman said. Still, he noted, “it’s clearly less than half the total market.”

Canada, however, is taking a different approach than Washington or states such as Colorado, which also legalized recreational pot in 2012 and has made similar progress in reducing illicit sales.

The government’s most jolting decision, illegal dealers here said, was to structure the new industry in a way that tended to bar them from it. In 2015, when the government first committed to legalization, many of them planned to apply to open private shops.

“All of us thought, ‘Okay . . . I’m going to be able to come out of the shadows and I’m going to be able to pay taxes,’ ” David said. “As time went on, it became clear that’s not what they were after.”

In Quebec and several other Canadian provinces, all cannabis stores are government-run, leaving no path to legality for people like David, who has worked in the underground industry for more than a decade, operating his business full time for several years.

[With pot legalized, job openings surge in Canada’s cannabis industry]

Colorado and other U.S. jurisdictions, by contrast, gave many small-scale dealers a chance at a legal job.

“That’s a huge difference,” said Lewis Koski, former director of the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division and now a consultant on legalization. “I can’t think of a state here in the U.S. that has a government-control model similar to . . . Canada’s.”

Even in provinces that do allow private shops or dispensaries, including Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, small businesses face high barriers. It costs almost $5,000 just to apply for a license, and if approved, $23,000 each year thereafter in regulatory fees, with provinces often adding their own charges.

There’s also a strict security-clearance requirement that looks at applicants’ job history and associations. Even if David were willing to move to another province, and despite having no criminal record, he said, he would probably be disqualified.

Small-scale growers hoping to join the legal system complain of similar hurdles.

To some observers, these early decisions foreshadow long-term problems.

Shutting out many in the black market has already triggered a vicious cycle, said Dan Malleck, an expert in drug and alcohol regulation from Brock University in Ontario. It helped ensure the initial undersupply of legal pot by preventing a huge volume of illicit pot from being folded in. The shortage is now driving customers back to the black market, further reinforcing it.

“They should have not just stockpiled,” Malleck said of authorities. “They should have created a mechanism that allowed illegal producers to move quickly into the legal producing system.”

Canadian provincial governments have also emphasized another strategy that wasn’t popular south of the border: police crackdowns.

Cracking down when legal supplies are still low and demand is therefore high for black-market pot hasn’t generally been seen as useful, according to Kleiman. “There’s no point,” he said. Only after the first year or two, when legal supplies match market demand, should officials try “to vigorously drive the illicit guys out.”

In Quebec, police announced the creation of a 54-person anti-cannabis unit even before legalization.

Unlike U.S. states that have legalized cannabis, Canadian authorities have also framed the crackdown in moral terms, arguing that even as the drug is declared a legal substance, fighting it on the black market is a matter of public safety.

“Organized crime controls an important part of it,” said Dany Dufour, the captain of Quebec’s new cannabis unit.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have found that nearly half of national “high-threat” organized crime groups are still tied to black-market pot and that the revenue can fund other crime such as fraud and gun trafficking, a spokeswoman said. The force sees smaller dealers like David as part of the problem.

“We also know that individuals can’t sell without sanction from organized crime groups,” she said.

But David said he isn’t connected to these groups. While bikers and other groups with ties to organized crime may be a problem in rural Quebec, another Montreal pot dealer said that those who grow and sell in the cities are mostly independent. “They’re kind of, like, weed nerds,” he said, “creative types, musicians, artists, people like that.”

On Canada’s west coast, too, the crime-linked groups “pretty much pulled out a long time ago,” after nearby Washington, Oregon, Colorado and California legalized cannabis, said Rob Gordon, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

The government spokeswoman said that many of the key decisions affecting options for people like David are made at the provincial level, not the federal one. But in interviews in December, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau minimized the problems, saying that the supply shortage would be resolved within months.

David said he’s skeptical about that. He also said he’s not spooked by the police crackdown and predicts his black-market business will continue to thrive.

“I didn’t intend to end up in this industry, but I did, and I’m making the best of it,” he said. “And I’m really good at it.”
 
More of the same. Can you say home grow? sigh

Canadian legal cannabis prices nearly 50 percent higher than black market prices


Marijuana became legal across Canada in October, but that hasn’t stopped the black market from thriving. Product shortages across the country have made it nearly impossible for some to purchase cannabis legally and have cause length wait times for those who have purchased cannabis online. Add to this the high cost of buying cannabis legally and it’s no wonder that people are continuing to purchase cannabis from the illicit market.

Numbers released earlier this week by government agency Statistics Canada found that the average price for a gram of legal recreational cannabis was $9.70 whereas a gram could be purchased from the illicit market for $6.51, a near 50 percent difference.

The agency got these numbers after receiving 385 price quotes using an application called StatsCannabis from when marijuana became legal on October 17 to December 31 of 2018. Half of the respondents reportedly purchased cannabis from a legal supplier.

David Clement, the North American affairs manager for consumer advocacy group Consumer Choice Centre, said that it’s unsurprising that prices of cannabis have risen.

Clement said that in legalizing marijuana, products are now subject to both federal and provincial taxes in addition to licensing costs and numerous other fees associated with running a cannabis business all the way through the production line to the retailer.

“It costs half a billion [over five years] to enforce the rules and regulations in the Cannabis Act, so in order to generate the revenues to cover that they’ve implemented fees and licenses on licensed producers,” said Clement.

There’s also an issue of adequate access in many of the provinces. Heavy restrictions have created a lack of competition, with some provinces being limited to government-run retail stores.

“The taxes and fees create prices that are high out of the gate, and then a lack of competition prevents those prices from being slowly pushed down,” said Clement.

Industry experts believe that until some of these restrictions and fees are lessened, people will continue flocking to the black market to buy marijuana at much lower prices.

“It’s a constant conversation with Health Canada and with provincial regulators to help streamline the burden to make sure that legal cannabis can compete with the black market on price, because that’s the only way we’re going to displace the black market,” said Jeffrey Lizotte, a cannabis lobbyist and CEO of Next Wave Brands.
 
'People need to know how to do this'
Growing cannabis indoors costs under $1 per gram, Neumann said. Growing it outdoors costs 50 cents per gram. He has a licence to grow each way. Cannabis sold by licensed medical producers runs on average about $8 per gram.

Four of Neumann's outdoor plants yield about four pounds of dried cannabis, he said. That's about 1,800 grams. For plants grown indoors under a 400-watt light, he can end up with 60-90 grams of dried flower.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-cannabis-home-grow-1.4810241
 
The Government Of Canada Is Recalling Another Brand Of Cannabis After Discovering It May Contain Mould


As of January 11, 2019, the Government of Canada announced that it has recalled Eldo dried cannabis after discovering that it may actually contain mould. Eldo dried cannabis is a product that is created by Up Cannabis Inc. and is sold through the Alberta Gaming Liquor & Cannabis Commission. The recall is issued for the general public of Canada who has purchased a certain lot of the cannabis.

The recall is specific to Eldo dried cannabis that has the packaging date of November 28, 2018, and contains the lot #1204201. Approximately 1,428 units were sold throughout Canada that may be affected. The recalled product could have been purchased anytime between November 29, 2018, and January 4, 2019.

The Government of Canada is warning customers who have purchased the product to stop using it immediately and to contact Up Cannabis Inc. to receive a full refund of the product. If the product was purchased online, it is recommended to contact Alberta Cannabis Call Centre at 1-855-436-5677.

If the product is used while containing mould it could lead to temporary health problems. Exposure to mould can actually cause the user to have an allergic reaction, which could result in sneezing, coughing, wheezing, runny nose or nasal congestion. It can also cause watery and itchy eyes as well.

This isn’t the first time that cannabis has been recalled throughout Canada since legalization. Just last month, Health Canada recalled two separate stains of Bonify dried cannabis since they were concerned that these strands would not reach the contaminant limits and regulations.

Bonify also received another recall a few weeks later when eight of its lots were discovered to have a labeling error where the values of cannabinoid were reversed.

An Ontario company, RedeCan, also had to recall their product after they received five separate complaints that it contained mould and many other companies have had to follow suit.

However, recalls aren't always issued. Narcity broke the story last month about the Ontario Cannabis Store not recalling their product, even after bugs were found in them.

For more information on the recall be sure to visit the Government of Canada’s website.

 
Enjoy it while you can Cannabis Canada, your edge is already eroding

Green Growth Brands Ltd., a U.S.-based cannabis retailer with a large footprint in Nevada, was all geared up to enter the Ontario market until an unexpected announcement in mid-December by the province placed a drastic cap on the number of retail licences issued for pot shops.

Citing supply concerns, the provincial government changed its rules from handing out more than 1,000 promised licences to a mere 25, which are being be chosen using a lottery system.

“We had hoped to have 25 stores in Toronto. But now, I don’t know if we’re even going to be in Ontario,” said Peter Horvath, chief executive of Columbus, Ohio-based Green Growth Brands. “We have the wherewithal to execute and generate tax revenues for the province. I’m not sure this was the best fiduciary move for them.”

But the changes to Ontario’s retail system are much in line with the federal government’s overall approach to legalizing cannabis, which exerts heavy control over the production and distribution of cannabis.

“This is about as regulated a marketplace as you’re going to find,” said David Phillips, former president of the Ontario Cannabis Store, the province’s sole online retailer and wholesaler.

Those restrictions are not necessarily positive say Horvath and a number of industry insiders who argue that the level of government control and intervention in the cannabis landscape, coupled with the shifting political climate south of the border in favour of federal legalization, will slowly erode Canada’s current place at the top of the cannabis leaderboard.

“It’s probably fair to say that Canadian operators are being hamstrung by policy,” said George Allen, president of Acreage Holdings, a U.S. cannabis investment company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange. “I respect what my peers in Canada have built in terms of footprint and scale, but in terms of its relevance to the U.S. market, especially once we’re federally legalized, they might as well be growing tomatoes.”

The term “first-mover” is frequently used in reference to Canada’s cannabis industry. Indeed, the country was just the second — after Uruguay — to legalize cannabis on a national level for recreational use. Almost every cannabis company, no matter where it is headquartered, that intends to raise money on public markets lists itself on a Canadian exchange.

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Bruce Linton, CEO of Canopy Growth Corp.

Furthermore, the largest cannabis companies — Canopy Growth Corp., Aurora Cannabis Inc., Tilray Inc., and Aphria Inc. — are Canadian and they are already carving out footprints and recognition for themselves in Europe, South America and even Africa.

But cannabis industry players that straddle investments north and south of the border are acutely aware of the differences between different individual U.S. states and Canada when it comes to the legalization of cannabis.

Afzal Hasan, president of Origin House, a cannabis products and brands company registered in Canada but operating mostly out of California, said Canada’s approach reflects a set of regulators who are “inexperienced” with cannabis.

“I don’t mean that in a negative way. But the onerous restrictions and the regulatory situation that has a monopolistic tint to it is what might set us back,” he said, citing the recent changes to Ontario’s retail system as an example.



Allen said U.S. companies started developing an edge over their Canadian counterparts after the Toronto Stock Exchange’s decision in February 2018 to not list cannabis companies with exposure to the U.S. over concerns the plant was still a banned Schedule 1 substance in the U.S.

The TSX rule meant Canadian companies could not set up shop down south, while U.S. companies could continue to operate freely in Canada.

“That must have hit Canadian cannabis companies hard,” Allen said. “But for us, that was the best decision they could have made. It allowed us to operate completely unfettered by a lot of capitalized competitors.”

The timing is ripe for companies such as Acreage to gain ground in the U.S., a market 10 times bigger than Canada.

It is widely expected that the STATES (Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States) Act, a bipartisan bill crafted by senators Cory Gardner and Elizabeth Warren, will pass in 2019, paving the way for cannabis companies to obtain a full range of financial services from big federally regulated banks such as Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., while eroding the stigma mainstream investors have in touching the cannabis sector.

“Canada is one-tenth the size of the opportunity here in the U.S. and we all know the prize is here,” said Acreage chief executive Kevin Murphy in a recent interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “Big investment and big conglomerates are going to start coming back to the U.S.”

But the TSX restriction and the drive towards legalization in the U.S. are just a couple of the problems Canadian cannabis companies face in maintaining their first-mover advantage.

Another primary one, Hasan believes, is not acting quickly enough to allow a wide range of products across a less restrictive retail regime.

“Just to be clear, we’ve only had this pseudo-medical system that had mail-order deliveries,” he said. “We’ve never had real retail and products with substantial distribution like edibles and vape pens.”

Hasan contrasts individual provincial markets such as Ontario to California, where thousands of dispensary chains and independent dispensaries flourish, offering what he claims is the “largest variety” of cannabis products that exists globally.

“We are working in the most discerning and competitive market, so the standard of what can go on the shelves is very high,” he said. “Frankly, I can’t see any Canadian flower on the shelves in California.”

Canada, unlike many states in the U.S., has also heavily restricted marketing and advertising rules, which are much more similar to tobacco than alcohol.

In a market where there are more than 100 licensed producers, and hundreds of cannabis brands, carving out individual recognition without using branding is undoubtedly a challenge.

“It’s a handicap, more so for the smaller companies, than us,” said Bruce Linton, chief executive of Canopy Growth. “We knew from Day One how touchy the government was about being allowed to advertise so we did as much as we could pre-legalization to get our Tweed brand known.”


Canopy’s efforts included displaying the Tweed brand on billboards and hosting conference and company events — all legal marketing activities as long as they did not portray cannabis consumption as a lifestyle.

“In California, you get hip-hop artists, all kinds of artists just rocking their own brands in any way that they want,” Hasan said. “You can really push your strain of cannabis, and that’s great for consumers.”

But as the world’s largest cannabis company by market value, Canopy Growth, perhaps unsurprisingly, sees Canada’s regulations as “appropriate,” enabling the company to be very successful in markets such as Europe, where regulatory restrictions toward the medical cannabis sector are just as stringent, if not more so.

“In America, it’s just not like that. And that’s fine. They can do their thing,” Linton said. “We are well-governed and well-structured and that means that the Europeans will trust us, the South Americans, Australians, they’ll all want to do business with us.”

Of course, the way in which cannabis is regulated in the U.S. is not without its flaws, cautions Horvath.

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Advertising for Canopy’s Tweed cannabis brand at Yonge and Dundas Square in Toronto prior to legalization.

For example, in setting up Washington’s legal cannabis regime, state regulators created three tiers of producers based on the square footage of each farm in order to avoid a situation where a few large producers dominate the market. But as regulators kept expanding the maximum farm size, bigger producers that could source capital ended up swallowing small-scale growers.

Now, Washington is facing a supply glut of weed, and prices have dramatically plunged since legalization.

These monopolistic “tendencies,” as Hasan calls them, also exist in multiple Canadian provinces.

For example, Manitoba’s retail cannabis system had more than 100 applicants vie for just four licences, two of which were awarded to partnerships with a connection to Canopy Growth (one directly with Winnipeg-based Delta 9 Cannabis Inc. and one between a small independent Manitoba company, B.O.B. Headquarters, and Canopy Growth-owned Tokyo Smoke).

“When I see markets like Manitoba, and the number of retail licences that were issued, and I see that they all went to the big boys, that kind of stuff doesn’t sit well with me,” Hasan said.

“I’d like the Canadian government to know that from our perspective, they’re only going to meet their goal of combating organized crime if we truly have a free market for cannabis.”
 
Ontario is 415,000 square miles. 25 dispensary licenses. Are they fucking kidding?

Small businesses won big in Ontario's cannabis lottery

On Friday Ontario announced the winners of the provinces cannabis retail lottery—and the majority of them are mom and pop shops, writes Calvin Hughes.

In total, there were 16,905 applications for the 25 licenses to sell recreational marijuana in Ontario. The vast majority of those applications came from individuals looking to open a small business, not big corporate players who are already established in the space. And in this first round of licensing draws, the small businesses won big. Of the 25 licenses, 19 were granted to unincorporated sole proprietorships—your average small business.

The next step for theses business will be applying for their prospective store locations. Lottery winners can apply to open a shop in any municipality with a population over 50,000 as long as the municipality hasn't opted out of cannabis sales. Winners will have until the end of this week to submit applications for the location of their stores. However, the timing of this is "awkward," noted cannabis consultant Edward Collins, since municipalities have until January 22 to opt out. That means winners may end up applying for store locations in municipalities that later decide to bar stores from opening there.

The winners also have to pass a criminal background check and produce the hefty fees demanded by the government as well. Business owners will need C$10,000 just to pay for the ability to open a single store and must also post a C$50,000 line of credit that will be regularly deducted from if they don't open their shops by the April 1 deadline.

Many of the lottery winners may not actually have that kind of money on hand, but experts don't think it'll be too hard for them to get it. While the lottery winners can't sell their store licenses until the end of the year, many are expected to enter some sort of deal with one or another or partner with one of the big industry players.

Despite those advantages, cannabis business advisor Tina Fraser believes these small business owners will still have a hard time being ready to go by the April 1 date. She says consumers should expect only a few stores to be operational by then.

The ongoing product supply shortages facing the Canadian cannabis industry could also prove to be difficult for the new Ontario pot shops to overcome. Even if supply does level out in the coming months, the demands of these new business is likely to cause further strain on the system.

At any rate, we're still a long way out from the some 1,000 cannabis retail locations the Ontario government promised when they announced their plan to privatize cannabis sales.
 
Canada's chronic shortage of legal cannabis expected to drag out for years

Canada's persistent shortage of legal cannabis could drag on for years. The impending legalization of edible pot will only divert more product away from empty store shelves across the country. One industry insider said he now expects that shortage to endure until 2022.

"If it was just the current product set, I'd say a year to 18 months," said Chuck Rifici, CEO of the Toronto-based cannabis company Auxly.

"But because we have edibles and a bunch of new product types coming in October, I think it'll be the better part of three years before we have true equilibrium and oversupply in the space."

Licensed producers have been adding capacity in droves. Millions of square feet of new greenhouse space has been built since last summer. But for every new gram produced, new demand is piling up as well.

"The medical cannabis market still grows by about five per cent a month," said Rifici. "We have about 300,000 Canadians accessing medically, so that's a drain on the system, as well as international exports that are starting to amplify."


Edibles industry ramps up

Meanwhile, the edible cannabis side of the industry is only starting to ramp up. The makers of Corona beer and Kim Crawford wines teamed up with Canopy Growth and expect to roll out cannabis-infused beer and wine. Budweiser partnered with Tilray, and Molson-Coors created their own joint venture with Quebec-based Hexo.

Cannabis-infused food and drink promises to open a whole new segment of the market. A recent report by Deloitte found 49 per cent of probable cannabis users in Canada are willing to try edibles. But that growth comes with a whole new batch of regulations and expectations.


canada-legalized-marijuana-20181012.jpg


It may take as many as three years before licensed producers are growing enough to supply the recreational, medicinal and edible markets. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)
Health Canada will require strict rules around shelf life and refrigeration. There will be specific rules around doses per serving. And that's where Kevin Letun and Pacific Rim Brands hope to step in. His company has partnered with labs at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna and the British Columbia Institute of Technology to dig into the science behind all that.

"Because this is a brand new consumer product and it's utilizing a schedule-1 drug that's been illegal for the last 80 years, consumers are going to want to trust the brand that they're going to be trying in the future," said Letun.

Right now, Pacific Rim Brands is working on getting the specific formulations for these products. Once that's completed, the company expects to start human testing to gather data. Essentially, the company is aiming to have formulations ready and approved this summer.

"Then, our goal is to look to either license these to existing beverage companies, potentially licensed producers or even develop our own brands," said Letun.


sold-out-cannabis-nwt.jpg
When the legal recreational market opened on Oct. 17, 2018, stores like this one in NWT quickly sold out of product. (Hilary Bird/CBC)
Letun said edibles will prove to be a much larger segment of the industry than the current smokeable pot.

"In the next ten years, you're going to see the smokeable cannabis (comprising) maybe only 10 to 20 per cent of the market," he said.

He expects edibles and infused drinks will take off once legalized. And he said that will go well beyond cannabis-infused beer and wine.

"There are so many other applications on the medicinal side too, when it comes to sleep aids or sports recovery when it comes to inflammation, pain, sports recovery."

Public consultations into the legalization of edible cannabis are open now and are expected to conclude at the end of February. As rules become more clear, the summer will see another surge in demand as companies look to get products ready for a market expected to open up on October 17.

It has only been three months since cannabis was legalized in Canada. There's something to be said for the fact that the highest profile issue to stem from such an enormous change in drug policy is a lack of supply.

That issue is moving toward resolution, perhaps more slowly than expected.
 
Canada's chronic shortage of legal cannabis expected to drag out for years


...:facepalm2::shakehead: leave it to the government to do it right!... it's hard for me to believe there is a shortage of 'legal' weed in canada... we have the black market, grey market and legal market... both black and grey markets are over supplied at the moment....but legal is having shortage issues???.... i don't buy it...


...there are greenhouses local to me that are basically giving pot away because they cannot get rid of it fast enough... SO i don't know what the government is doing?? and all the tobacco companies are getting into the cannabis, and the natives are already in the cannabis game...


...in the last 15+ years(?) there has NEVER been any 'shortage' or lack of cannabis of any kind, at least in my neck of the woods... now the government has their hands in it they say there under supplied?





...i've said it right from the start... the Canadian government had a great idea, no execution, but they wanted to make their deadline (oct. 17th, 2018) and they are still trying to figure out how its going to happen LMFAO!!!!!
...their first mistake was having cannabis go legal and no where to buy it 'legally' on that day- they needed retail stores in virtually every community ready to serve that day, not a shitty online store...



...sorry bout the mini rant :ko: but i think the government should have just decriminalized it instead since everything was WORKING just fine as was...
 
Where’s the weed? Clues to Canada’s cannabis shortage

Where’s the weed!?

That’s been a common Canadian refrain lately. Shortages appeared almost immediately after recreational cannabis sales began last October.

Provincial distributors subsequently blamed producers and federal regulators. Lacking stock, Québec closed stores three days a week. Alberta froze retailer licensing and Ontario limited store licences to 25.

Medical cannabis shortfall concerns appeared even earlier. Some users worried producers were prioritizing more lucrative recreational products or overseas markets.

In response, federal regulators pointed to increasing industry inventoriesand producer licences. Producers blamed new-industry growing painsand regulatory red tape. Meanwhile, some analysts criticized provincial licensing limits as over-reactions.

How can Canada seemingly have large cannabis supplies and yet widespread shortages? Recently released Health Canada cannabis inventory and sales data provide some clues.

Growing supplies
Cannabis producers greatly expanded their stockpiles prior to legalization last year. Between January and September, month-end inventories of “dry” cannabis (flowers and leaves) more than doubled from 40 to 102 tonnes.

Similarly, cannabis-infused oil supplies more than tripled, from 14 to 48 kilolitres. Inventory growth slowed in October as recreational sales began.

file-20190121-100270-jk4g01.png

Producers’ month-end inventories of oil and dry cannabis. Prepared by author from Health Canada data. Michael Armstrong
So as officials have noted, there was lots of cannabis overall. That doesn’t mean there weren’t shortages.

Medical decline and rebound
Consider medical cannabis. Between April 2017 and September 2018, oil sales per registered client increased 18 per cent. Meanwhile, dry sales plunged 53 per cent, from 11.0 grams per client to just 5.1.

file-20190121-100264-5j481x.png

Medical quantities sold relative to total registered clients. October and November 2018 use September’s client count. Prepared by author from Health Canada data. Michael Armstrong
Dry sales’ steep decline might reflect a gradual medical shift to oils. But shortages also might have contributed.

The post-legalization sales increases support that theory. November’s oil sales were 18 per cent above September’s. But dry sales soared 103 per cent. Medical clients seemingly refilled their dry supplies after legalization made prescription transfers easier.

Differences between oil and dry cannabis also appear in the recreational cannabis data.

Oil flows, dry cannabis struggles
For cannabis oil, recreational sales hit 1.9 kilolitres in November, legalization’s first full month. But comparison to October’s stronger numbers suggests retailers lost sales of roughly 1.8 kilolitres due to shortages. That implies potential recreational demand was around 3.8 kilolitres monthly. Meanwhile, medical sales hit 5.9 kilolitres.

Distributor inventories ended November in good shape. They more than doubled to 7.6 kilolitres. That’s enough to satisfy more than two months of recreational demand.

Similarly, producers ended with 26.3 kilolitres of finished (ready-to-ship) oil. That’s nearly three months of combined recreational and medical demand. Plus, their production and outbound shipping rates both exceeded total end-user demand. That suggests shortages would ease over time.

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Rectangles show month-end inventories of unfinished (dashed lines) and finished (solid lines) products. Arrows show the month’s flows of products from producers toward consumers. Green indicates dry cannabis, orange indicates oils. Numbers indicate tonnes of dry cannabis and kilolitres of oil. Estimated by author from Health Canada data. Michael Armstrong
By comparison, dry cannabis struggled in November. Sales were 5.1 tonnes, but lost sales were perhaps about 8.3 tonnes. That put monthly recreational demand around 13.4 tonnes. Medical sales hit 3.7 tonnes.

Distributors’ inventory climbed significantly to 10.5 tonnes. But that’s insufficient for even one month’s demand.

Producer’s finished goods inventory of 15.1 tonnes likewise represented less than a month of combined recreational-medical needs. Production and shipments also trailed demand. That implies shortages would continue worsening.

Explanations?
Several explanations are possible for dry cannabis shortfalls existing despite large total inventories.

One is that 86 per cent of producers’ dry inventory was unfinished and not yet available for sale. Much of that was recent crops being dried and cured. But the large contrast with finished goods suggests possible processing and packaging bottlenecks too.

Another reason is these data add-up inventories across all producers. By contrast, each recreational customer is served by just one provincial distributor.

Suppose one source has a surplus while another has a shortage. Their total inventory could look healthy. But half their users would see empty shelves.

As well, supply and demand are much harder to balance for individual products than for overall product categories. That’s a common retail problem.

For example, imagine visiting a clothing store. Request “a shirt”, and sales staff could show you hundreds. But specify “a long-sleeved, medium-tall, all-cotton, emerald-green shirt” and they might have none to offer, despite huge inventory overall.

Cannabis buyers and sellers likely experienced such mismatches. Medical clients treating conditions like epilepsy would be especially at risk. They’d want specific product formulations, not random substitutes.

One factor that doesn’t look important is cannabis exports. In 2018, those averaged only 2.5 per cent of monthly production. That’s probably too small to significantly affect domestic availability.

Another non-issue was cannabis growing itself. Producers’ unfinished dry stockpiles remained almost unchanged during November. That suggests crop harvesting rates kept up with processing.

Bigger market, bigger challenges
The industry faces larger challenges longer term. Estimates of Canada’s total demand vary widely. But Health Canada’s latest assessment, for dry cannabis and oil equivalents combined works out to about 77 tonnes monthly.

So the legal cannabis industry must not only provide better availability of the specific products users want. To eventually serve every recreational and medical user, it also needs to massively grow its capacity. And it must do that while competing with black markets despite federal restrictions on branding and promotion.
 
This editorial on the new edible rulings in Canada brings up some really good points; especially regarding THC limits imo.



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WHY THE LEGALIZATION OF EDIBLES AND CONCENTRATES WILL BE WORSE THAN YOU THINK
MIKE O.JANUARY 26, 2019


If you thought that the Canadian government’s legalization of cannabis was already bad enough, it’s about to get much worse with the impending legalization of edibles and concentrates this October.

The government’s efforts to make legal edibles as unappealing as possible to children may end up being so successful that even the adults won’t want it (much the same way legal weed grown by licensed producers is boycotted by many in the cannabis community over quality concerns and pesticides) with unreasonable THC limits, excessive (and boring) plain packaging requirements, and ambiguous rules that threaten to eliminate certain products altogether are just some of the most pressing reasons that consumers who prefer edibles and concentrates are going to be worse off than their flower-smoking peers.

With Health Canada’s proposal, we get a peek at what the future may hold and we have until Feb. 20 to let the government know what we think. All the information you need to give your input is available here.



[Editor’s note: A larger version of this table can be found here]

Edibles “Must not be appealing to kids”
In Health Canada’s proposed edibles regulations, the phrase “must not be appealing to kids” is found in every product category from cannabis drinkables to topicals- but what does that even mean?

Can edibles makers even make gummies, lollipops, brownies, and many of the other common forms of edibles? Those are all very appealing to children, but liking candy isn’t limited to just kids which leaves the question of how far will the government go in regulating edible cannabis products?

Maybe the “must not be appealing to kids” requirement only refers to the marketing and packaging of edibles and not the form they come in? When it comes to marketing, the same restrictions will apply to edibles as dried flower, so things like animal mascots aren’t allowed because of their appeal to kids- which is also a primary justification for the plain packaging requirements.

We need to watch what the government does closely or else it could overstep its bounds and get into nanny state territory, when all we really need is parents to be responsible and keep their edibles out of their children’s reach, much the same way that alcohol, prescription medicines, and chemical cleaners are kept away from kids in places they can’t easily get to.

Dosage limits and packaging
The 10 mg of THC limit per package for cannabis edibles and drinkables proposed by Health Canada is preposterous because when it comes to edibles, there is a huge range in potency- from as little as 5 mg of THC to 400 mg and above- and edibles containing 5-10 mg of THC are considered low dose and are recommended to people trying edibles for the first time and those with a low tolerance to THC.

But limiting edibles to 10 mg of THC per package would put those looking for a stronger dose of THC out of luck- unless they want to buy 20 packages at a time just to get 200 mg of THC.

For comparison’s sake, if you think of dried flower as the beer and wine of cannabis, then high-potency edibles and concentrates can be seen as the hard liquor equivalent. Using that analogy the proposed 10 mg of THC limit per package for cannabis edibles would be like a liquor store selling spirits not in bottles but by the shot, with each fluid ounce coming in its own separate packaging.

But it gets worse, particularly for the environment, because of all the…

Wasteful plastic packaging
This requirement would guarantee that edibles would be an even greater waste of packaging than dried flower which runs the risk of alienating the target market as surveys have shown cannabis users are more environmentally conscious than the general population, and the excess packaging would make buying legal edibles harder to justify.

The LP’s recognize this, too, as CEO of CannTrust Peter Aceto said:

“The edible legislation does imply a lot of packaging but we would like less of it — our patients and customers would like less packaging”

Health Canada needs to consider the fact that there’s already enough plastic in the landfills already and ask itself why should it make more when it doesn’t have to?

To let the government know what you think of the proposals, click here.
 
A privately-owned cannabis store in Newfoundland is closing, and the manager says supply issues are largely to blame.


Puff Puff Pass Headshop in Clarenville, N.L., is the province’s first private weed store casualty since recreational marijuana was legalized in October.

It is one of just six private, regulated cannabis retailers in Newfoundland and Labrador, and will shut its doors for good on Thursday.

Business manager Tina Greening says retailers in Newfoundland and Labrador are only allowed to purchase from seven licensed producers, picked by the province’s liquor commission.

She said the suppliers provided stores with a “small list” of what they were allowed to order, and even dictated quantities



https://globalnews.ca/news/4906704/clarenville-cannabis-store-closes/
 
I don't mind the restrictions on packaging to discourage attraction to youth.

Really the only thing I find objectionable, and I'm seeing the same thing in draft edible legislation in MD, is the 10 mg per dose limit. This is asinine.

My tolerance ain't know where as high as many, and 50 mg is a good night time go to sleep dose for me.

I have seen that one way they are getting around similar in DC dispensaries is, for example, a bag of chocolates which with 10mg but 10 pieces in the pack.

How would you like your politicians (who seem to, in the most part, be completely ignorant and uninterested in anything except how to pursue of reelection) determining the dosage for....say, your blood pressure meds. Or your cholesterol meds? No...didn't think that would please anybody.

I've come to the conclusion that the best way for me is to just buy a couple of grams of shatter, decarb it, and make my own baked goods. Much easier than extracting from flower (of course, if you live in part of the country that has a bumper crop of flower, you may view that differently).

Cheers
 

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