A conference about medical marijuana is being held in Charlottetown Saturday. 

The conference will include an overview of the current laws surrounding the use of medical marijuana. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that patients can can consume marijuana, as well as use it in extract and derivative form, rather than just smoking the plant. 

Organizers say they hope to raise awareness through the event.

Panel discussion participants include a pharmacist and a representative with the Canadian Mental Health Association.

The conference is being hosted by the group Maritimers Unite for Medical Marijuana.

In 2013, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Paul Graham let slip a secret. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg,” he told New York Times Magazine. “There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said, ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’”

It turns out even an experienced investor like Graham can be influenced by the notion that entrepreneurial success is genetically predetermined—inherit the right combination of money-making DNA, and you’ll wind up the founder of the next billion-dollar-valued startup.

There is a lot of chatter happening at City Hall this month about medicinal-marijuana dispensaries. A public hearing that began June 10 reconvenes on Monday (June 22), when speaker number 173 will take the microphone at a meeting beginning at 6 p.m.

Meanwhile, a group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana Canada (SAM Canada) has emerged as a vocal opponent to the city’s proposed regulatory framework for the over-the-counter sale of cannabis. Pamela McColl, a Vancouver-based member of the national group’s advisory council, told the Straight her organization is more than just talk.

“We have a lot of lawyers looking at this whole thing,” McColl said.

In a statement on June 11, Canadian health minister Rona Ambrose reacted strongly to the Supreme Court ruling that medical cannabis should be available in all forms to patients using it for medical purposes. Not only is Ambrose “outraged”, she believes that it sends a message of normalization to Canadian youth and that there is no clear evidence on the efficacy of cannabis for medical purposes.

But she’s wrong.

It’s troubling that the health minister of Canada, a voice that is suppose to serve the public health interest of Canadians, still cannot admit that cannabis can be, and is, used for a variety of medical purposes.

Montreal-based Affinor Growers to showcase its vertical farming technology

MONTREAL— Affinor Growers, a diversified agriculture and biotechnology company, which is perhaps better known as a legal marijuana grower, has announced a cooperative research and development agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The agreement will allow the USDA Agricultural Research Service to work with Affinor’s vertical farming technology at its facility in Kearneysville, W.V. and at Affinor’s controlled environment in Quebec. The ARS will use Affinor’s proprietary vertical farming systems to grow not marijuana, but strawberries.

Last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that legalized medicinal marijuana edibles boosted business for one local cannabis candy producer.

 “As soon as it happened on Thursday [June 11], our phone started ringing off the hook from different dispensaries across Canada wanting to get our product into their stores,” said Michelle Sikora, who owns and operates S&M Medicinal Sweet Shoppe with her husband Doug out of their home in Selma Park.

“People are asking us, ‘How much can we get and how fast?’”

The Sikoras have been making and selling organic marijuana edibles, teas, tinctures, lotions and oils for two years through a mail-order process that, until now, they say, has operated “in a grey zone” pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.

John Weston is not pleased with the medical marijuana ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada last week.

The ruling, which came down June 11, means medical marijuana patients will be able to use edible marijuana and other extracts and derivatives, in addition to being able to smoke it.

“It is unfortunate that judges feel they can displace Health Canada as our health regulator and decide what drugs are medicines,” said Weston, Member of Parliament for West Vancouver–Sunshine Coast–Sea to Sky Country.

“Never before in Canadian history has a drug become a medicine just because judges said so.” 

Weston said the ruling also sends a misleading message about the potential dangers of marijuana. 

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John Stix founded what may be one of the happiest companies in Canada. And thanks to the Plasticity Labs app he has the data to prove it: average happiness scores at his company, Fibernetics, hover in the high 80s to low 90s—impressively chipper stats.

Stix’s description of his corporate headquarters in Cambridge, Ont., makes Google’s fun-seeking campus sound dull. (“Let’s see, when do we have craft classes?” he says, mulling the in-house schedule. “Is it Thursday? Oh no, that’s boxing club.”)

The world was sad to hear that Tommy Chong was yet again announcing a cancer diagnosis. This is his second cancer diagnosis in the past three years, but Tommy Chong says he will fight cancer in the way that he knows best — with marijuana.

However, is Tommy Chong’s idea that marijuana can cure his cancer diagnosis a medically proven one?

These days, most people associate Tommy Chong with the 2014 Dancing With The Stars season. Outside of DWTS fame for being one of the oldest contestants, Tommy Chong has had a decades-long career as an actor, comedian, and marijuana advocate.