In the modern age, most of our purchases are tracked by apps, smart home devices like Alexa, and social media, to name a few.

Prior to the Canada’s relatively recent cannabis legalization, consumers only had to worry about government surveillance. Now, however, the cannabis industry joins the rest of the world in having their purchasing habits monitored.

The Saskatchewan government is planning to treat e-cigarettes and vaporizers much like tobacco, limiting where they’re sold and how they’re advertised while setting the age limit at 18.

Health Minister Jim Reiter introduced amendments to the Tobacco Control Act on Tuesday. If passed, the new rules will come into effect in the spring, but Reiter said they’re only a first step.

Notably, the bill won’t explicitly ban flavoured vaping products. It would allow the government to restrict them through regulation. Reiter said that will come after a consultation period.

Hungry for cannabis

Edmonton city councillor Mike Nickel thinks towns across the country are neglecting regulations for cannabis cafes.

“Cannabis lounges are going to come,” he told Global News. “No other place in the country right now, I don’t think, has enabled in their bylaws the concept of a cannabis lounge, so we’re breaking new ground here.”

Council will debate Nickel’s motion in their upcoming meeting on Tuesday.

“If it’s a legitimate product, then we have to see it consumed responsibly,” he said.

“This is an opportunity to talk about how we can grow some business in town.”

MediPharm Labs was just granted a tasty treat from Health Canada.

The Ontario-based company has received a cannabis research licence that will allow it to conduct controlled testing on humans to determine the best flavour profiles for its products.

Province Brands of Canada, developers of the world’s first and only beers brewed from the cannabis plant, will join with Western University (WU) to study and develop innovative yeasts.

Health Canada is warning Canadians that the ingredients used to flavour some vaping products have not been tested to establish if they can be safely inhaled, although the federal department reports it’s working towards rectifying the issue.

“The inhalation of flavours — this happens with electronic cigarettes— it did not exist before this,” Mathieu Morissette, a researcher at the University Institute of Cardiology and Respirology of Quebec, and a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at l’Université Laval, told the Canadian Press.

CBD is having prominent impact on global markets and regulation, as regulators move to use it as an alternative to traditionally prescribed medications.

Canada made headlines in 2018 after it became the second country in the world to completely legalise adult cannabis use. The country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a strong advocate for legalisation and ultimately, the country decided to pass new legislation and initiate legal adult-use in late 2018. As more CBD clinical results come out, they are having an impact on regulation around cannabis.

Innocuously tucked inside Canopy Growth Corp.’s cavernous, custom-built bottling facility is a series of four vats which may be the most important pieces of equipment the pot giant owns.

The series of stainless steel containers will each contain more than 300 litres of cannabis resin, the crucial ingredient at the centre of Canopy’s infused beverage plans which it hopes will usher in a new category of spirits and drive in millions of dollars in new revenue.

“Those will contain millions of dollars worth of cannabis soon,” said Mark Zekulin, chief executive officer of Canopy Growth, during a tour of the company’s bottling and chocolate facilities on Tuesday.

The legalization of cannabis had an unintended impact on RCMP dogs, who are no longer trained to sniff out cannabis when conducting drug searches.

According to Dog Team Trainer Sergeant Robert Heppell, police dogs that were previously trained on anything marijuana-based, including hash and hash oils, were removed from the program, retired because of age, or were sold to other working agencies that wanted dogs with a marijuana-based narcotics profile.