Canopy Growth Corp. is laying off 75 people in North America, and may cut dozens of additional positions in Denmark, as the Canadian cannabis producer completes a year-long cost-cutting review of its operations, a company spokesperson said. 

The restructuring in Canopy’s home market took immediate effect, with 75 people let go in North America, the spokesperson said. Most of those affected workers were employed at Canopy's headquarters in Smiths Falls, Ont. 

"As part of the final stage of Canopy Growth’s end-to-end global strategic review, staffing adjustments were made within our North American operations team earlier today," the spokesperson told BNN Bloomberg in an emailed statement Tuesday. 

Denmark’s ambitious medical cannabis program is being stymied by the CannTrust scandal and price issues as new figures show patient numbers flat-lining.

Canadian firm CannTrust has been hounded by the authorities and the markets after an ‘illegal growing operation’ was discovered in one of its domestic cultivation facilities. Shortly after this discovery it emerged that CannTrust’s partner in Denmark, StenoCare, had sold some of these illegal buds to its patients – and CannTrust has since ceased the sale and shipment of all cannabis products.

Alberta is placing an unspecified amount of CannTrust products on hold as a precautionary measure, officials said, pending an investigation by Health Canada into whether cannabis from unlicensed facilities is safe for consumption.

The move by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission (AGLC) comes after Ontario's cannabis distributor pulled CannTrust products from its site.

CannTrust Holdings Danish partner Stenocare says it also has quarantined medical pot products linked to illegal cultivation at the Canadian cannabis company's Ontario greenhouse.

Illegal oil particularly showing up more often in packages from abroad.

It seems as if oil derived from hemp plants is become increasingly popular in Denmark, at least according to new figures from the state police and the tax authority SKAT.

The police confiscated almost 1,000 containers of cannabis oil in May and June this year alone – over twice as many as the 408 taken over the whole of 2016.

SKAT backs up the trend, noting that cannabis oil is increasingly making its way into Denmark in packages sent from abroad.

“Specifically cannabis oil is something that has begun turning up more in the last couple of years,” Preben Buchholtz, a deputy head at SKAT’s customs department, told DR Nyheder.

THC zero-tolerance

Epilepsy Hospital Filadelfia, in the Danish town of Dianalund, has begun treating patients with medicinal cannabis. This is only part of Denmark's new pilot project to estimate the benefits of the use of medicinal cannabis by certain types of patients.

Although marijuana is not yet the doctor's preferred choice in Denmark, whose hospitals rather prefer conservative treatment, a pilot project to estimate the positive effects of cannabis was approved of in November 2016. During the trial period for the use of raw, unprocessed cannabis, about 1,500 patients are looking forward for a pain-relieving effect.