It’s becoming clear cannabis edibles, extracts and topicals probably won’t be a part of holiday shopping this year as provincial regulators can only order products as of Dec. 16.

While storeowners were hoping to bank off the bud and customers were hoping to get high this season, the anticipation for new products will have to spill into January 2020.

But how much will that sting?

Jon Kamin, chief revenue officer at Lift & Co., says it’s a hard question to answer.

“It might have been a good revenue bump for the market as a whole,” he said in a phone interview.

“But it’s such a cluttered media landscape right now … it might’ve actually been very difficult to introduce a new brand given the noise.”

Cannabis 2.0 likely won’t come in time for Christmas after all.

Reps in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec all say they expect the first sales of edibles, extracts and topicals to come no sooner than January 2020.

And if anything does come before then it will be a “very limited supply.”

Dec. 16, 2019, is the earliest date that notified products in the new classes could be made available for sale to authorized distributors and sellers in provinces and territories.

People adore coffee, and most of us are pretty dependant on it.

Coffee is one of the world’s most traded commodities, the most widely used legal psychoactive substance, and its impact on the modern way of life is simply undeniable.

A fresh cup of Joe is a source of flavor and enjoyment, but the core reason why people indulge in coffee is because of the invigorating effects it produces.

The main active ingredient in coffee (found also in the majority of teas and soft drinks) is caffeine, a powerful compound responsible for the energizing sensations we experience.

While caffeine is a strictly stimulating substance, cannabis is considered as both a stimulant and a depressant.

And the battle begins in earnest.

With the introduction of edible, beverage, vape and other new products over the coming months, the country’s legal pot industry will finally bring both passive fists to the fight with its shadowy, illicit counterpart, experts say.

And the range of confections, booze alternatives and vaping products that will increasingly pack the shelves of pot stores — with the first wave expected to hit in January — is likely to attract vast numbers of new users to the pleasures and pitfalls of cannabis.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that medical marijuana could be all that is needed to tame the gnarly beast known as the opioid epidemic. On the other hand, there is also some research showing that this is all kooky talk.

It seems that ever since the first study emerged showing that the cannabis plant might be able to prevent tens of thousands of Americans from dropping dead every year from fatal overdoses, we have seen a steady stream of new studies showing conflicting results. To say the science over this concept is all over the map is an understatement.

B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth and Finance Minister Carole James were the NDP’s point persons on pot a year before they formed a minority government with the B.C. Greens.

In 2016, Farnworth and James toured legal marijuana operations in Oregon and neighbouring Washington, where recreational cannabis has been legal since 2012. As they prepared the NDP’s election platform on how to handle legalization, Farnworth remembers visiting an Oregon store that offered cannabis-infused ice cream.

“I asked, what’s the dosage like?” Farnworth said in an interview. “They said oh, a tablespoon. And I remember thinking, who eats a tablespoon of ice cream?”

Glen Herrington wants to start a weed farm, but his neighbours aren’t so sure.

Herrington is applying for a micro-cultivation licence to grow medical cannabis on his 10-acre property in Nasonworth, just south of Fredericton.

If the application is approved, he will be allowed to use 2,150 sq. ft. of his land to grow cannabis, indoors and/or outdoors. Herrington intends to sell his crop to another producer, preferably to make CBD oil, and expects the farm would create five new jobs in the region.

Despite years of stagnation, Canadian cannabis research is finally kicking into high gear.

The University of Alberta announced a partnership on Tuesday with Atlas Biotechnologies. The entities will conduct research relating to medical cannabis and its application in the treatment of a number of neurological illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and multiple sclerosis (MS).

The munchies are real — at least sometimes and for some people — and science has only begun to understand why.

Given the long shared history cannabis has with humanity, several associations have long endured. One of those connections is marijuana and “the munchies” — the increased appetite attributed to weed consumption.

It’s not a completely unfounded association. Many medical marijuana patients cite cannabis’s uncanny ability to induce appetite as a reason for its therapeutic use, yet many pot smokers will tell you they don’t experience an increased urge to stuff their pie holes at all. As it turns out, the munchies are real — at least sometimes and for some people — and science has only begun to understand why.

Cannabis products have been legal in Canada for a year now. In 2018, Canada legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. This year, Canada included edibles, beverages, topicals, and concentrates in the second phase of legalization. Deloitte estimates the cannabis beverage market could be worth 529 million Canadian dollars annually in Canada.