As Canada’s prime minister talks up the imminent legalization of marijuana, a Vancouver-based pharmaceutical startup is taking the cannabis plant apart to find compounds that could treat disorders ranging from glaucoma to a rare skin disorder.

InMed Pharmaceuticals aims to use the more than 100 different “cannabinoids” as the raw materials for a number of clinical applications.

“We’re going far away from any so-called recreational (use),” said InMed chief medical officer Dr. Ado Muhammad. “We’re going away completely from that direction, to make sure that the product is comparable to any other antibiotics or drugs.”

A Saskatoon medical marijuana company says its products have been given a clean bill of health after undergoing voluntary testing.

Last month, CanniMed Therapeutics Inc. commissioned a B.C. company to do third-party testing of its plant and oil products for dozens of pesticides and fungicides.

President Brent Zettl said even though the company was confident it doesn't have any of those elements in its products, "let's just check and make sure. Let's put our stuff through the batteries and see."

He added: "We could have put up our hand a long time ago and say, 'Hey, we don't use them,' but it sort of rings hollow unless you have evidence from someone who is a third party, so that's why we did what we did."

Chronic pain sufferers and those taking mental health meds would rather turn to cannabis instead of their prescribed opioid medication, according to new research.

Chronic pain sufferers and those taking mental health meds would rather turn to cannabis instead of their prescribed opioid medication, according to new research by the University of British Columbia and University of Victoria. "This study is one of the first to track medical cannabis use under the new system of licensed producers, meaning that all participants had physician authorization to access cannabis in addition to their prescription medicines," says UBC Assoc. Prof. Zach Walsh, co-author of the study.

A new study looking at how Canadians use cannabis is being launched by the B.C. Centre on Substance Use.

“The major goal is to understand better why Canadians use cannabis, what are their motivations, and what are the possible harms and benefits,” M-J Milloy, a University of B.C. assistant professor and research scientist at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, which is affiliated with Substance Abuse centre, said in an interview Thursday.

“The data to date describes how many Canadians use cannabis, but the detailed information that scientists and policy-makers will need to evaluate legalization has never been collected.”

Cities have the right to deny business licences to illegal marijuana dispensaries and to prohibit the cultivation or sale of marijuana through their zoning bylaws, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.

The case is the latest development in what has become a patchwork of inconsistent rules and legal skirmishes as cities grapple with changing laws and an aggressive new marijuana industry. While the sale of marijuana at storefronts, such as dispensaries, remains illegal, some cities such as Vancouver have moved to regulate them through business licences. Others, including Abbotsford, have remained determined to keep them outlawed.

It was probably inevitable, especially on the cannabis-loving West Coast.

A Christian church has been turned into a marijuana dispensary.

The quaint building that used to house Shawnigan United Church on Vancouver Island has now been “re-christened” the Green Tree Medicinal Dispensary.

There is symbolic power in the transformation. And, depending on your tastes, the metaphorical shift is positive or negative.

The anti-religious might cheer that a church, which many stereotype as a bastion of supernaturalism and conservative social morality, has finally joined the live-and-let-live West Coast zeitgest.

Vancouver’s approach to regulating illegal marijuana dispensaries is working, says the councillor who helped develop Canada’s first municipal pot licensing regime, even if almost half of the stores continue to operate outside the bylaw.

Councillor Kerry Jang, point person for the governing Vision Vancouver party on the marijuana file, said that regardless of how long it takes to shut down these rogue shops, the city’s regulatory program – not police raids – is paying off. The strategy is meeting the city’s public-health goals of stamping out sales to minors and cutting down on the armed robberies now plaguing Toronto’s illegal dispensary sector.

A Vancouver-based medical marijuana producer is taking their business to new heights with a budding facility at Edmonton Airport.

Aurora Cannabis is leasing 30 acres from the Edmonton Regional Airports Authority to build an 800,000 square foot production facility, 170 times bigger than their plant in Mountain View County.

“We’re very excited about it,” Aurora vice president Cam Battley says.

“It’s going to be the largest, the most advanced and the most highly automated cannabis production facility in the world, as far as we know, and it’s going to be the first cannabis production facility to be located at an international airport.”