A company trying to break into the marijuana-infused drinks business isn't happy with Health Canada's new regulations on packaging.

Last week, the federal government came out with its official rules and timetables on cannabis edibles. 

Among the new rules came strict edicts on packaging, including limitations on brand logos and descriptions of the product.

"If I was to come to your home and bring you a bottle of cannabis infused wine as a gift, do you want me to show up with that bottle of wine looking like toilet bowl cleanser or do you want it to look like a beautiful bottle of wine," said Terry Donnelly, CEO of the Vancouver-based Hill Street Beverage Company.

Molson Coors Brewing's (TAP) cannabis joint venture plans to start selling multiple types of pot beverages on Canadian shelves the first day they can legally be sold, though they won't contain alcohol.

The maker of Coors Light has partnered with Gatineau, Quebec-based Hexo(HEXO) to make a variety of non-alcoholic, cannabis-infused drinks for the Canadian market. The joint venture, called Truss, will have "lots of different beverages" for sale on Dec. 16, when the beverages become legal in Canada, said Jay McMillan, Hexo's vice president of strategic development.

Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane wants to make the province home to South Africa’s first cannabis industry – already reading proposals from interested international parties, and working on feasibility studies to register farms.

Speaking to the City Press, Mabuyane said that people had been growing cannabis in the province for years, but now the opportunity exists to formalise it, and turn it into a lucrative industry.

He said that the stigma attached to cannabis is that of smoking and getting high, but in markets in Europe and Canada, there is a large industry built around the plant, which includes medicines, bio-fuels and other products.

Canadians looking to buy cannabis-infused brownies or lotions will find a “limited selection” in legal stores in mid-December at the earliest, the federal government says, but industry players expect the full rollout of next-generation pot products to come in 2020 or later.

Health Canada on Friday released its final regulations governing the new classes of cannabis-infused goods, including topicals and vaporizable concentrates, and indicated the rules will come into force on Oct. 17 — exactly one year since the legalization of recreational pot in Canada.

However, the Ottawa-based agency noted that after the law takes effect, federal cannabis licence holders must provide 60 days notice to the agency of their intent to sell new products.

With the state's legislative session ending on Wednesday, it still remains unclear if recreational marijuana will be legalized in New York. But as of Saturday morning, a cannabis retail shop officially opened its doors just five miles from the Rainbow Bridge into Canada.

Dozens of people came to the grand opening of Choom Cannabis - one of more than 20 recreational marijuana stores that has opened in Ontario since Canada legalized the drug.

Before this point, the closest marijuana retail shop to Western New York was in St. Catharines. But now with a quick drive over the bridge, officials are now expecting to see more Americans.

Staff from WeedMD’s operations in Aylmer and Strathroy, along with members of its leadership team and Strathroy-Caradoc Mayor Joanne Vanderheyden, rolled up their sleeves and planted marijuana in a 10-hectare plot previously used to grow asparagus.

More than 20,000 clones – small cannabis plants grown from the cuttings of a mother plant – will go into the ground in a fenced section of the company’s 64-hectare property that also houses its greenhouse operation.

The farm is outfitted with an irrigation system and plastic row coverings to keep weeds from growing.

“I can confidently say that we’ve thought of everything here. We will have an amazing bumper crop,” WeedMD chief cannabis officer Derek Pedro said.

In case you haven't been paying attention, legal cannabis is a big-dollar business model. Having generated $12.2 billion in global (legal) sales in 2018, according to figures from Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics, the worldwide weed industry could make a run at $50 billion, or perhaps $75 billion, in annual sales by the time 2029-2030 rolls around, based on various Wall Street estimates.

Quebec's provincially operated cannabis shops made $71 million in sales in their first year and sold the most cannabis in the country in terms of dollars and volume, but they still posted a $4.9-million loss to be covered by the provincial government.

The provincial cannabis corporation -- known as the SQDC -- said in a statement that the provincial government revenues from consumption and excise taxes totalled about $21.7 million between June 12, 2018 and March 30.

The first stores in the Quebec network opened on Oct. 17, the day recreational marijuana became legal in the country.

However, the stores had to reduce opening hours, plagued by supply challenges faced by all provinces no matter what business model they were employing.

Despite extensive renovations and infrastructure investment, it appears that the chances of a cannabis retail outlet opening in Outlook after all this time may simply go up in smoke.

That’s the concern after the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) reportedly denied Dr. Jean Paul Lim’s application to open up for business.  The BC-based Dr. Lim was the recipient of three permits to sell retail marijuana in Saskatchewan in the government’s draw lottery held last spring.  Lim, a clinical instructor at the University of British Columbia, also has the licenses to open up stores in Melfort and Rosetown, both of which also remain unopen.

After hiding in the shadows for decades, the cannabis movement is experiencing a long-overdue coming-out party. Following the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada, and the ongoing push to legalize at the state level in the U.S. and in various countries around the world, the potential for legal marijuana is truly budding.

Projections by various sources suggest that legal marijuana could become, at minimum, a $50 billion a year industry (globally) by 2029, with peak sales potential of as much as $166 billion. That's not a dollar figure Wall Street and investors will easily overlook.