Canada’s high court on Friday will contemplate whether it’s a constitutional right to munch cookies, brownies and oils laced with medical marijuana.

Federal regulations restrict authorized users of physician-prescribed cannabis to consuming only dried marijuana plants. Brewing pot in tea, baking it into a brownie or any form of consumption other than smoking the dried plant buds can trigger criminal trafficking and narcotics possession charges under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

The question before the Supreme Court of Canada, in its first foray into the medical marijuana debate, is whether the Health Canada regulation violated medical marijuana users’ constitutional right to life, liberty and safety.

After a privacy breach that affected thousands of people enrolled in the medical marijuana program, including some from P.E.I., a Halifax law firm wants to launch a class-action lawsuit against the federal government.              

Canada's privacy commissioner ruled earlier this week that Health Canada violated privacy rules in 2013 when it mailed out information to more than 40,000 people enrolled in the medical marijuana program.

The mailouts, which explained changes that were coming to the program, revealed the recipients were receiving medical marijuana.              

Health Canada says it was an administrative error and it's put measures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.              

KAMLOOPS - A provincial court judge has denied a Kamloops man's application to be reunited with 10 medical marijuana plants that were seized by RCMP last summer.

Judge Roy Dickey says he sympathizes with Henry Rhode's plight, but he was breaking the law by having expired licenses and not growing at an approved site.

Dickey criticizes what he calls a "bureaucratic bungle" created by the Conservative government and Health Canada when the country's medical marijuana rules were changed.

He says a new law requiring those with permits to grow medical pot to instead purchase from an approved supplier has left people like Rhode "out to dry."

As a result of policy changes introduced by the Conservative government, corporations are taking over medicinal cannabis, concentrating business in the hands of people with ties to Big Pharma.

One morning in February, Nanaimo councillors and business leaders met in an industrial area about 20 minutes from the city’s downtown.

The building they stood before is nondescript. But, recounted Sasha Angus, CEO of the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation, “It’s like a vault wrapped by Fort Knox wrapped in a castle.

“Cameras, vibration sensors, and a lot of time and effort,” he continued, describing the facility’s security measures. “There’s a vault that’s two feet thick with more vibration sensors. It’s about one level below a nuclear-missile silo.”

After only 3½ months of operation, Leamington’s Aphria Inc. is spending $1 million to expand its medical marijuana production.

The investment is part of a two-phase expansion plan for the business that just began operations in December. Startup costs were $6 million.

The phase one investment will increase the current growing capacity of 1,200 to 1,500 kilograms of marijuana to 2,500 kg annually.

But Aphria CEO Vic Neufeld said that’s still not enough to keep up with the growing demand.

“It’s not enough for us to service this business opportunity,” Neufeld said Wednesday of wholesale demand that has developed in the last two months.

• Dr. Ian Mitchell will recruit people in the fall to research the effect of different preparations of cannabis on posttraumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Ian Mitchell says that in an ideal world, physicians would learn about the medicinal properties of cannabis in medical school. Doctors would be trained about different extracts from marijuana plants, including cannabidiol, aka CBD, and tetrahydrocannabinol, aka THC.

But the Kamloops emergency-room physician tells the Georgia Straight by phone that the vast majority of doctors haven’t been educated in this area.

The Canadian Medical Marijuana experience for investors has for the most part been a tremendous letdown thus far. When Tweed Marijuana Inc. (TSX.V:TWD) lost 10 percent on its first day open of $3.32, and as of Friday last week accumulated a total YTD loss of 41 percent, the writing was on the wall.

Of course, that does not apply to insiders and early stage investors. Tweed founders paid as little as $0.15 a share, and their instant wealth came at the direct expense of retail investors.

But that is the game, and anybody who cries about it has no business investing in it.

In order to give Lift readers a better understanding of the Quality Assurance and testing practices that go into producing medical marijuana under the MMPR, we’ve enlisted the services of Emily Kirkham, the lead analytical chemistry consultant at Signoto, in Vancouver, BC. A professional chemist with a B.Sc. in Chemistry from McGill University, she brings over 15 years of experience working in analytical laboratories, with an emphasis on quality control procedures and method development. Signoto provides quality control consulting services to the Canadian medical cannabis industry.

There were days when David Kralik would arrive at his landscaping and snow-removal business in Mississauga and stay just a few minutes – the heady odour of marijuana from the grow-op next door was too powerful.

“You open the door to come in, go into my office, and I just sit down, fire up the computer and – ” He lets out an expletive. “And you just leave. It’s that bad.”

Mr. Kralik couldn’t call the police to complain about the grow-op, or another in the same building, because they’re both legal and under federal jurisdiction.