In a decade and a half of practising law, I’ve never come across an industry changing and evolving as rapidly as Canada’s medical cannabis industry.  It’s fascinating, but it’s also time-consuming to stay abreast of everything that’s going on.  So in case you blinked recently, here’s a quick update on my ‘top ten’ list of current issues:

TORONTO - As Canada's burgeoning medical marijuana industry ignites, a number of local pot producers are looking to take their homegrown expertise abroad.

"With the cannabis market across the world expanding and opening up, that's presenting opportunities for Canadian producers," says Neil Closner, the chief executive of Toronto-based MedReleaf Corp.

Analysts say Health Canada's strict quality controls make exporting plants grown in Canada to other jurisdictions a cost-prohibitive proposition. Instead, Canadian producers are looking to take what they have learned at home and set up new corporate entities in other countries.

If you happen to see a robot on the side of the road this summer, don’t be afraid to pick him up. That’s just hitchBOT, a friendly hitch-hiking robot trying to make his (her? its?) way from Boston to San Francisco.

Designed by Canadian researchers, hitchBOT is part art project, part social experiment. Can robots trust humans? Or, perhaps more importantly, can drivers trust hitchBOT?

If you see hitchBOT along the side of the road or outside a coffee shop, you’re free to take him with you. He just wants to see the country — from Times Square to the Grand Canyon, and everywhere in between. HitchBOT can’t move on his own, so once you get tired of dragging him around, feel free to pass him off to a friend or stranger. Or just leave him out in a public place.

REGINA — Amid the flowers in a downtown Swift Current planter this week were buds of another kind.

On Monday, RCMP weeded a suspected marijuana plant from a flower pot in the 300 block of Central Avenue North.

Suspected, said City RCMP Staff Sgt. Gary Hodges, because “we didn’t send it away for analysis, nor are we going to.” But “it looked like it based on our experience.”

RCMP seized and disposed of the plant.

Hodges has “no clue” how it got there.

“There’s all kinds of speculation: Did somebody plant it there as a joke? I don’t know where the city gets their plants from — did somebody at the greenhouse nursery put it (there)? There’s numerous, millions of ways it could have got there.”

A medical marijuana shop in Winnipeg could be forced to close its doors, but a Winnipeg city councillor says that’s the wrong approach.

Your Medical Marijuana Headquarters opened on July 1.

Owner Glenn Price said police have been in this week warning him and his customers that they could face arrest. Winnipeg police won’t comment but say an investigation is ongoing.

The federal government said stores like this are breaking the law.

But Vancouver is regulating them and Coun. Ross Eadie said Winnipeg should do the same.

Eadie, the Mynarksi representative, said it’s high time the city govern these shops because there is no zoning rule or bylaw precluding them from operating.

Anita Roy, assistant manager at Trees Dispensary, Nanaimo, offers cannabis-based products said to relieve everything from stress to relief from physical symptoms of illnesses at the company’s location on Bowen Road.

A steady stream of customers file into Trees Dispensary Nanaimo, one of several places to pick up medical marijuana in the Harbour City.

Cookies, brownies and B.C bud can all be found behind glass cases at the Bowen Road storefront, estimated to serve 1,500 people each week. Clients don’t have to be medical marijuana patients as long as they declare they have a serious medical condition.

CALGARY — A Calgary woman says the normal, happy life of her nine-year-old daughter is in jeopardy following a decision to discontinue the girl’s medicinal marijuana treatment.

Sarah Wilkinson says her daughter Mia suffered frequent, severe epileptic seizures throughout the early years of her life.

Wilkinson says the dozens of pills the little girl took on a daily basis did nothing for her condition but since a doctor put her on marijuana taken orally in oil form through a dropper, she hasn’t had a seizure in 18 months.

Recently, Wilkinson requested a renewal of Mia’s medical marijuana licence but the doctor at Alberta Children’s Hospital who had prescribed it in the first place now says he can no longer do so because of hospital policy.

 On July 10, 2015 ABcann Medicinals received its full facility approval from Health Canada. Through this approval, ABcann will now be able to flower the plants they currently have growing and put it through the necessary testing prior to sale.

"Full room approval has been provided and dictates that all bloom rooms, growth chambers, vegetation room, clean/general horticulture rooms, processing and drying areas, as well as ABcann's in house laboratory, have been given Health Canada's blessing to commence full production activities," says Tim Humberstone, Senior Person In-Charge at ABcann.