Vancouver-based pot activist Dana Larsen vows to push ahead with his pro-legalization rallies and tour despite being arrested and charged in Calgary this week for distributing marijuana seeds.

“It’s absolutely fuelling the fire,” he said Thursday. “I’m getting more requests for seeds and have more people contacting me to donate seeds — so really, this kind of harassment just gets people worked up and gets way more media attention.”

Larsen, 44, was arrested Wednesday evening in Calgary during the second stop of his cross-country OverGrow Canada tour.

One day before WeeMedical Chilliwack opened on March 18, manager Shayli Vere was optimistic about the future. Eighteen days later the medical marijuana dispensary was raided by RCMP, Vere was arrested, the shop was shuttered by city hall and Vere and the society that manages WeeMedical are on the outs.

Just 18 days after opening its doors, Chilliwack's first medical marijuana dispensary is shuttered, raided by police Tuesday evening.

Even before it opened on March 19, WeeMedical Dispensary was warned by City of Chilliwack lawyers it was violating business licence and zoning bylaws.

The tour hasn’t officially started and it’s already generating controversy.

Marijuana activist Dana Larsen of Vancouver launches his cross-country tour today with his first stop in Kelowna.

Larsen is asking Canadians to ‘overgrow’ their cities with pot plants.

He’s giving away more than one million cannabis seeds to anyone who agrees to plant them either on private or public property.

“I want cannabis to be growing so openly and so commonly that the police just don’t bother arresting anybody for it anymore.”

Larsen admits he’s advocating civil disobedience in the push to have marijuana legalized in Canada.

Biofuel The impacts of climate change on our fragile planet are both increasingly obvious and increasingly disastrous. Fossil fuels are unquestionably one of the biggest contributors; the race to find a sustainable substitute for these finite and ever-diminishing resources is on. Biofuel is one of the suggestions, but how viable is it? And is hemp the best biofuel?

Vancouver marijuana dispensaries have a few extra days grace before an official deadline to close.

The city originally told business owners that any storefront not moving through the regulatory process was to cease operations by April 20. Now, that date as it appears on a city website has been updated to read April 29.

In a telephone interview, Andreea Toma, director of licensing and property-use inspections for the City of Vancouver, told the Straight the change is not an extension, “per se”.

“The deadlines are specific to when a six-month count starts,” she explained. “It depends on when they were notified.”

After a successful court battle to shut down one of Don Briere’s illegal pot shops in Abbotsford, the city is now asking a judge to outlaw his remaining franchise and ban the cannabis entrepreneur from operating in the community.

The City of Abbotsford filed a petition this week to stop Mr. Briere, owner of the largest chain of dispensaries in Canada, or any of his partners from running a pot shop in the city without a valid business licence – something the mayor says Mr. Briere will never obtain as long as marijuana remains illegal. The city is also asking a judge to force Mr. Briere’s business to pay all outstanding fines, which bylaw officers have been levying almost daily as they ticket the store on South Fraser Way for operating illegally.

After mailing out dime bags to Canadian members of Parliament earlier this year, British Columbia weed activist and former New Democratic Party candidate Dana Larsen is expanding his pot giveaway to tokers from coast to coast.

Today, Larsen pledged to send free weed seeds to anyone wanting to plant a cannabis "victory garden" this spring. He says it's an effort to put pressure on the feds to keep their election promise and end pot prohibition.

BC’s NDP is planning a trip to Washington State to learn more about how well the legalization and regulation of marijuana is working out.

Mike Farnworth and Carole James are heading to Washington state.

“Prime Minister Trudeau made [legalization] a key election plank in his quest for victory, and I believe that it’s responsible for us here in BC to start addressing this issue and being prepared for when that actually happens,” says BC NDP leader John Horgan.

A federal court judge in Vancouver on Wednesday ruled that medical marijuana patients have the Constitutional right to grow their own cannabis, striking down a ban introduced by Canada's previous Conservative government.

The court suspended its decision for six months to give Ottawa time to respond.

A group of British Columbia residents took Canada to court in 2013, arguing a new law requiring medical marijuana patients to buy cannabis from licensed producers, instead of growing their own, was unconstitutional.

They said marijuana grown under the government system was too expensive and did not allow them to control the strains and dosages of their treatment.

B.C. Coroners Service says the baby died Friday of natural causes

The severely ill baby whose parents wanted to treat with cannabis oil has died, the B.C. Coroners Service has confirmed.

Mary Jane Pierce was born prematurely at 25 weeks with serious health problems, including brain bleeding, cerebral palsy and severe seizures.

Her parents, Justin Pierce and Michelle Arnold, had fought to treat her symptoms with cannabis oil, which they said had helped each of them with their own epilepsy issues. 

The B.C. Coroners Service said the baby girl died Friday at B.C. Children's Hospital.