Since applying for her cannabis retail licence, Sasha Soeterik had been biding her time, operating a coffee and gelato shop in Toronto’s trendy Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood while she waited for her application to go through.
The province had been ramping up approvals ever since it scrapped the controversial lottery system it initially used to give out cannabis retail licences, replacing it with an open licensing model.
Near to me is the Queensway, its been overrun by pot shops.
Legalization of recreational cannabis has seen usage rise by 20 percent, according to new research on America’s rapid and risky experiment with a drug that can be damaging — and even deadly — for young people.
University of Minnesota researchers say the frequency of pot use in California, Colorado, Oregon and other states that legalized adult recreational use jumped by a fifth, prompting ‘complex questions’ for policymakers.
The research counters other studies that recorded no increased use, and pro-cannabis campaigners who argued legalization would not boost consumption as black market pot was always widely available.
Cannabis products with exceptionally high concentrations of THC have been associated with increased instances of depression, anxiety, and dependence.
Marijuana is the third-most commonly used drug globally, after alcohol and nicotine. Its potency, measured by the concentration of THC, has steadily increased over the past few decades, raising the risk of users experiencing psychosis and addiction, according to an analysis published in the Lancet last week that was conducted by a team of mental health experts at the University of Bath’s Department of Psychology in the United Kingdom. The psychologists analyzed the association between the types of marijuana people use and addiction and mental health issues, drawing on 20 studies involving nearly 120,000 people.
As Congress considers legalizing marijuana on the national level, some Republicans have raised concerns about the impact such a move would have on the country’s rising crime rate.
“In short, this bill would be an enormous gift to the cartels and gangs, and in the midst of a nationwide violent crime surge,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said last week at a hearing about Senate cannabis legislation.
Cotton is not the only GOP lawmaker to sound the alarm over reforming the rules around marijuana. In fact, the debate over legalization has raged for decades and, despite years of data from the states that have allowed the drug, produced little in the way of consensus.
You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that the Highland Park shooter is sick in the head.
His evil act is unfathomable, but he does fit a familiar pattern of mass killers: alienated young male stoners who appear to be in the grip of a distinctively American madness.
Those who knew the 21-year-old suspect, Robert Crimo III, say he habitually smoked cannabis, a habit he appeared to share with young mass shooters, including at Uvalde, Dayton, Parkland and Aurora.
“It’s no different than any other industry that bases their profits on addiction,”
The mass legalisation of cannabis has led to a mental health “time bomb” in the United States and scientists are warning that stronger strains are driving psychosis among young people.
Rules were relaxed a decade ago in the states of Washington and Colorado while voters in California chose to legalise recreational marijuana use in 2016. In total 47 states and Washington DC have softened their laws on cannabis in some form.
Supporters of these policies point to the billions of dollars in tax revenue state’s can make each year from regulating the drug, and argue that criminalising cannabis disproportionately harms black communities.
Related … Clear majorities of Black Americans favor marijuana legalization, easing of criminal penalties
A growing number of states have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, and at the federal level, Congress is considering decriminalizing the drug and expunging past convictions for marijuana-related offenses.
The link to violence is being deliberately played down.
Fearless prediction: In 10 years professional victims will sue for reparations as marijuana legalization will be found to have disproportionately harmed blacks.
Despite public awareness campaigns and law enforcement training to deter marijuana-impaired driving, a third of Canadians who’ve recently used cannabis say they’ve been behind the wheel after consuming, according to a new government survey.
The online survey, conducted in January 2022 by EKOS for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada and recently posted online, says 33 per cent of Canadians who report having used cannabis within the previous year say that they have driven under the influence.
Thirty-two cannabis retailers have closed in St. Thomas, Windsor, Ottawa, Hamilton and the Toronto region, the AGCO said.
No reasons were given for the closings, and the tally didn’t include proposed stores that didn’t make it through the application process.
Dr. Robin MacGregor Murray, professor of psychiatric research at King’s College London, is sitting in his living room in Wimbledon, London. Upstairs, his wife and colleague, Dr. Marta Di Forti, is talking with a patient over Zoom. The husband-and-wife team are two of the world’s leading researchers on cannabis and psychosis.
In 2004, the pair launched the Genetics and Psychotic Disorder study, examining the genetic and environmental causes of psychosis. Since 2019, Di Forti has been running the National Health Service’s first clinic for cannabis-induced psychosis. The initial pilot scheme had 20 patients. Demand for the service is only growing, with 30 or more patients participating by Zoom each week. Di Forti told the London Times that she gets “emails from parents and young people across the country asking to come to the clinic,” but they do not yet have the capacity. At present the staff are mostly operating virtually, on account of the pandemic, but they also admit roughly 200 patients to the hospital per year with florid cannabis-induced psychosis. In England, cannabis-related hospitalizations are on the rise, with a 57 percent increase between 2013 and 2018, from 19,765 to 31,130 patients.
Anyone who ever had a garage band knows how hard it is to find a good, reliable drummer. The band I had in my younger days went through several talented guys. They were great musicians and improved the entire venture exponentially — when they remembered to show up. Which wasn’t often. We fired one after another and finally resorted to taking turns on the drums ourselves. (We were awful.) But these talented, brilliant drummers loved getting high, and so things like remembering to show up for their commitments often fell by the wayside. Their pot use made them unreliable people. And this was a couple of decades ago when weed was still relatively weak.
Legal cannabis sales surpass illicit market for the first time in Ontario: OCS
The latest quarterly report from the Ontario Cannabis Stores (OCS) marks a turning point in Canada’s most populous province.
Nearly 55 per cent of all cannabis sales in the last quarter, running from July to Sept., took place in legal channels.
The calculation for legal market share is estimated from quarterly updates from Statistics Canada, which collects self-reported data from cannabis consumers.
You need to walk no more than 10 minutes down trendy Queen Street West between Gladstone and Ossington Avenues to see first-hand the effects of Ontario’s legal cannabis market: the north side of that block and a half stretch is home to seven pot shops.
At the corner of Northcote Avenue, the operators of what was once a hip, millennial bar pre-pandemic is now one of the newest pot shops on the block, a passion project of an industry veteran and partners.
Right next door is an outpost of Tokyo Smoke — the largest retail chain in the city with 19 stores and eight active applications, according to its website. Together, the pair of stores creates a mini block of pot-only retail.
They are literally popping up like Weeds man! Seriously. Expect a great many to fail as is usual when government is involved.
Sasha Soeterik, the owner of independent cannabis retail shop Flower Pot in downtown Toronto, was renovating her premises in preparation to open in the spring of 2020 when she noticed a competitor doing the same just two doors away.
The rival shop was part of a national chain of cannabis stores – Superette – that already had two locations in downtown Toronto, and had secured licences from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario to open another five stores within a radius of less than 10 kilometres.
It is ludicrous, new pot outlets are sprouting like weeds.
Go incognito.
Evidence in a bizarre case of a Canadian soldier accused of drugging comrades with marijuana-laced cupcakes was lost by military police, says the soldier’s lawyer — who accuses the Department of National Defence of conducting a sloppy, incompetent investigation.
Bombardier Chelsea Cogswell’s military trial is slated to start next month. It’s believed to be the first of its kind.
She faces 18 charges, including administering a noxious substance to eight soldiers without their consent in July 2018 at CFB Gagetown. At the time, the soldiers were taking part in a live-fire exercise involving explosives and weapons drills.
Health Canada issues recall for pre-rolled joints contaminated with mould, yeast, bacteria
Health Canada has issued a recall that could harsh some Canadians’ cannabis buzz.
The agency is pulling three batches of pre-rolled joints that may be contaminated with yeast, mould and bacteria.
Delta 9’s “Joints for Jabs” program is giving away three grand prizes of a one-year supply of cannabis to those who have received two doses of vaccine.
It works out to $100 worth of cannabis per month.
