The time has come for British Columbia to take the lead on the marijuana legalization process — according to one medical marijuana producer.

The long-awaited federal marijuana legalization bill being unveiled today, 

The legalization bill will consider how marijuana will be taxed, regulated and sold safely, but many critics say it will still leave a lot of details to the provinces — especially on how these policies will be enacted.

For some, the bill is a huge entrepreneurial opportunity.

A major B.C. study has found that a high proportion of young adults who consume marijuana admit they either drive while stoned or get into vehicles with drivers who’ve used marijuana.

Dana Larsen has shipped millions of cannabis seeds across Canada in an effort to 'normalize the cultivation' of the plant ahead of marijuana legalization.

The man who’s helped ship millions of cannabis seeds across the country for the last couple years is visiting Winnipeg Monday to drop off tens of thousands more.

B.C.-based cannabis advocate Dana Larsen, 45, is touring cross-country with his group Overgrow Canada, which aims to hand out five million cannabis seeds this year.

In 2016, they spread 2.5 million seeds, encouraging Canadians to plant cannabis in public places like parks to "normalize the cultivation" of the plant, Larsen said in an interview Monday.

Consumers can trust what varieties of wine taste like regardless of the store they buy it from, and they could soon have similar expectations for strains of marijuana, say researchers at the University of British Columbia.

Prof. Jorg Bohlmann and a team of researchers have found 30 genes within the cannabis genome that determine the aroma and flavour of the plant.

The findings, published in the journal Plos One, are the first step toward creating flavour standards that can be replicated.

Bohlmann said with the legalization of marijuana on the horizon, there is a real need for standardization of the product when it comes to flavours and the strength of psychoactive compounds.

The hunt is on for a new location for Vancouver’s 4/20 marijuana rally, starting in 2018.

Vancouver Councillor Adriane Carr is expected to introduce a motion Wednesday asking staff to find an appropriate non-residential site for the city’s largest cannabis rally, which draws more than 10,000 people annually and cost taxpayers $148,000 last year.

“The event is not going away,” said Carr. “For public safety and to ensure taxpayers aren’t burdened with costs of this event, it needs to be permitted, and it looks like the city has to take the lead.”

Jodie Emery has returned to Vancouver after being arrested for running recreational marijuana stores in Ontario, and says she thinks the charges she's facing are politically motivated.

The self-described activist called her and her husband Marc's arrests the latest salvo in a battle between what she calls the grassroots industry and government licenced producers.

"In the future, it would be great to see cannabis normalized and easily available," said Emery on her motivation for opening a chain of recreational weed shops across the country.

"That’s why we were demonstrating what legalization should look like: storefronts where adults can walk in and access cannabis."

Chilliwack is now home to the first of “many” cannabis medical clinics in B.C. run by a publicly traded corporation that already has operations from Newfoundland to Alberta.

Canada’s “Princess of Pot” flew home to Vancouver Monday to cut ties with the cannabis empire she and her husband spent decades growing.

Jodie Emery returned to her Chinatown apartment for the first time since being released from custody earlier this month in Toronto, where she, her husband Marc Emery, and three other associates in the Cannabis Culture business were arrested and charged with a range of offenses including drug trafficking.

“I am so grateful to be back where the nature and the forest and the mountains can soothe my soul, after that concrete jungle,” she said Monday in her first interview since returning to Vancouver.

The Vancouver park board has voted to ban 4/20 rallies and Cannabis Day events from city parks, even as organizers vowed this year’s April 20 event will go on, with or without the board’s approval. 

The decision by the board Monday night blunted plans by the Vancouver 4/20 Events Society, which applied for a permit to hold this year’s smoke-in at Sunset Beach park.

“This is not an anti-marijuana motion,” said commissioner John Coupar, who put forward the motion to deny permits for pot-related events at park board properties.

Not all medicinal marijuana is created equal. That's what some experts are saying as they warn about the health risks and curtailed effectiveness associated with smoking medicine.

As medical pot becomes increasingly mainstream and Canada moves toward legalizing the substance, health experts are emphasizing the need for doctors and patients to consider the sometimes serious side effects linked to the various ways of consuming the drug.

Paul Farnan, an addictions specialist at the University of British Columbia, likened a recommendation to smoke medicinal marijuana to a doctor handing out a prescription to light up an opium pipe.