A bunch of celebrities have been jumping on the medical and adult-use cannabis bandwagon. Where they haven’t; some have been pushed onto it – without permission.

The last thing a relatively new industry needs are snake-oil salesmen and shonky marketing tactics, particularly where that industry is focused on health and wellness.

Five years ago the shelves of most dispensaries housed sugary edibles, strong concentrates and a selection of flower with as much THC as a grower could manage. The industry and its products were geared towards the male consumer who dominated the market.

Fast forward to 2020 and markets like California are seeing a rise of women-centric cannabis products and services -- low dose mints, high end topical oils and lotions, CBD bath balms, mini-joints with low levels of THC that everyone can enjoy.

British Columbia college is looking to supply a fresh batch of professionally-trained budtenders to the province’s growing cannabis retail market.

Okanagan College announced last week a new online Cannabis Retail Sales course set to launch Feb. 17 — increasing the total number of cannabis-related courses it offers to eight.

Okanagan College instructor Christopher Simpson used his industry experience to develop the new cannabis retail course. Photo courtesy of Okanagan College

On a Saturday afternoon midway through January, it’s about -20 C, and one of Saint John, N.B.’s unlicensed cannabis shops has a huge lineup that almost spills out of the door. 

You might have thought that 2019 would be a great year for cannabidiol (CBD) stocks. I certainly did. After all, hemp-derived CBD was legalized in the U.S. in December 2018, when the 2018 Farm Bill passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by the president.

But an ominous consumer warning by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November caused marijuana stocks, especially those with CBD business in the U.S., to collapse. Now, though, there's a good reason to think that CBD stocks could soon skyrocket and not look back. Here's why.

Though a lot of marijuana history has been made in recent years, most of it can be attributed to Canada, which became the first industrialized country in the modern era to green-light adult-use cannabis sales in October 2018.

Despite the launch of recreational pot sales not going as planned -- marijuana sales totaled only about 1 billion Canadian dollars (approximately $765 million U.S.) in the trailing 12 months since Oct. 17, 2018 -- Wall Street analysts still believe that Canada could be generating in the neighborhood of $5 billion in annual sales from weed by 2024. This provides a long and bountiful runway for the Canadian pot industry to blossom.

Cannabis retailers say the appetite for pot-infused edibles is outstripping the supply — and the provincial distributor can’t say when that will change.

It’s a replay of what occurred a year ago when logistical and regulatory hurdles created a shortage of cannabis in stores, a bottleneck that led to a six-month halt on new pot shops being approved by regulator-wholesaler Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis.

“This was definitely to be expected in a brand new industry,” said AGLC spokeswoman Heather Holmen.

Windsor police say arrests were made for cannabis-related offences at an Erie Street East cafe on Wednesday — just one week after the same location was raided for similar cannabis-related offences.

In what has become an open clash between law enforcement agencies and illicit cannabis sellers, four people were taken into custody at Envy Cafe at 188 Erie St. East on Jan. 22.

Envy Cafe was one of two places that Windsor police, Essex County OPP, and members of the Provincial Joint Forces Cannabis Enforcement Team shut down on Jan. 15.

Windsor police said officers investigated the cafe again on Wednesday after they noticed that property closure signs put there on Jan. 15 had been removed.

The difference between cannabis prices on the illicit and legal markets in the fourth quarter of last year widened slightly from the prior three-month period, according to new figures from Statistics Canada published Thursday.

The average price of cannabis in the illicit market during the fourth quarter of 2019 was $5.73 per gram, slightly higher than the $5.65 reported in the prior quarter but below the $6.44 mark tallied in the year-earlier period, data from StatsCan showed in its quarterly release of crowdsourced pricing information.

The average price of legal cannabis purchased by Canadians in the fourth quarter was $10.30, edging higher from the $10.12 observed in the prior quarter and up from the $9.69 in the fourth quarter of 2018, the data showed.