The long-promised day has arrived. Cannabis-curious consumers in Canada who want to try marijuana drinks can now buy them at a dispensary or have them delivered to their door.

That’s good news for those who prefer drinking their THC as opposed to smoking it, a trend expected to grow as more consumers seek a healthier option.

Companies in the cannabis space are banking on that trend, including Tweed, among the first drinkables to go on sale across the nation. People may already know the Ontario-based weed company because of its partnership with Snoop Dogg, producing the rapper’s line of marijuana products for the Canadian market. 

The Pontiac Group is used to adapting quickly.

The First Nations owned and operated socio-economic development firm, which fosters on-reserve business opportunities, navigated the first community benefits agreement signed between a cannabis company and a First Nations community in Canada in 2015, three years ahead of federal legalization.

More recently, they’ve been pushing Health Canada to evolve the regulations around cannabis delivery while advocating for the use of drones to make deliveries to remote locations. But now, as the COVID-19 pandemic grips the world, they’ve altered their course — at least temporarily.

Canadians are being encouraged to stay home as much as possible amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But cannabis-loving Ontarians have had to venture outdoors to a brick-and-mortar pot shops if they wanted to receive their weed in a timely manner this week.

The Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) has announced planned service delays associated with shipping products to clients. “With the end of our financial year, it is time for our annual inventory review with the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario,” reads a statement posted to the OCS website.

Cannabis companies across American and Canada are helping healthcare workers by offering supplies amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

Entrepreneurs in the marijuana space are realizing they can help fill gaps in the severe supply shortage hospitals are facing as they brace for a surge in COVID-19 patients. Safety items such as masks, protective gowns, gloves, and other personal protection equipment (PPE) used by cannabis growers and budtenders are being donated to health workers and hospitals. In addition, extractors who engineer cannabis concentrates have been making hand sanitizer with ethanol in order to help reduce the hand sanitizer shortage. 

Results of the study found that between 70-90% of legal marijuana products contained THC levels higher than 15%.

s misinformation on COVID-19 continues to spread almost as fast as the virus itself, one Canadian company wants to separate fact from fiction on whether compounds in cannabis can help treat the disease.

Toronto-based Cannalogue, a medical cannabis e-commerce firm, has applied to Health Canada to conduct a clinical trial to see if cannabidiol (CBD) can reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms in patients.

Canadian officials are turning to the cannabis industry to see if laboratories typically used to check for cannabinoids can be also used to test for COVID-19. 

In an email sent to licensed cannabis industry executives on Thursday obtained by BNN Bloomberg, Health Canada acting director general Joanne Garrah asked respondents if there was any spare lab capacity to assist the country with COVID-19 testing. 

"Health Canada is working to identify lab capacity that might be available across the country in various sectors, including at licensed cannabis production sites, to assist with supporting COVID-19 testing," the email stated. 

The OPP have intercepted a shipment of contraband bound for a federal prison in Kingston via drone.

On Tuesday around 4 a.m., members of the Penitentiary Squad, Kingston Police Service and Correctional Service of Canada responded to suspicious activity near Collins Bay Institution.

The officers located a drone and arrested two individuals nearby.

Officials also recovered a package within the institution walls.

Contraband seized on March 24, 2020 at Collins Bay Institution.

Along with the drone, investigators seized cannabis, cellphones, weapons and tobacco.

The novel coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China in December last year. Officially called COVID-19, the virus since then has become a global pandemic. In an effort to control the spread in Canada, it was announced recently that non-essential businesses will shut down in Ontario and Quebec. Pot shops, deemed essential, will remain open.

Cannabis, as it turns out, is an increasingly popular choice of those prepping for isolation.

On the outskirts of Toronto, next to the Pearson International Airport, there is a 16,000 square foot cannabis testing laboratory whose owner says it can process 500 coronavirus tests a day. With an investment for additional equipment, that number could rise to more than 1,000 tests a day. 

“Testing right now is just way too slow, it’s unbearably slow,” John Slaughter, the CEO of High North Laboratories told The GrowthOp. “So we started looking internally to see what would it take for us to do that kind of testing and found out it wasn’t really much. We were right on the cusp of it anyway.”