TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 6, 2015) - Abba Medix Corp., ("Abba Medix", a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saratoga Electronic Solutions Inc., "Saratoga", or the "Company") (CSE:ABA) is pleased to report that it has entered into a Letter of Intent with 9037136 Canada Inc., operating and known as Redecan Pharm ("Redecan"), a Health Canada licensed producer and distributor of medical marijuana.

Redecan is focused on developing premium quality medical marijuana products and is a licensed producer and seller, able to cultivate marijuana under the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations ("MMPR") in Canada.

TORONTO -- The people who own restaurants, bars and pubs in Ontario have an idea to give consumers another option to buy beer -- so-called "off sales" from their establishments.

The industry group Restaurants Canada says six provinces, including Quebec and British Columbia, already allow restaurants and bars to sell beer for home consumption as part of their liquor licences.

Restaurants Canada vice-president James Rilett says staff in restaurants and bars are trained to sell alcoholic beverages, and calls the idea of "off sales" a natural evolution in Ontario's retail system.

Rilett says "off sales" would also mean wider distribution for craft and micro brewers who complain about their limited access to the LCBO and Beer Store.

One of Canada's licensed medical marijuana facilities will double in size this summer, a year after Health Canada radically changed industry rules.

Aphria Medical Marijuana cultivates 17,000 marijuana plants in a 3,000-square-metre facility operating in Leamington, Ont., south of Windsor. By summer, it will be twice that size and operating in two buildings, rather than one.

The company won't start producing double the amount of pot until late fall.

Aphria has 25 full-time employees with no casual workers.

In April 2014, Health Canada moved medical pot production from a cottage industry of thousands of loosely regulated growers to a commercially competitive sector.

There’s a yoga class in Toronto that comes with an added perk: smoking weed.

No, it’s not a late April Fool’s Day joke.

At Ganja Yoga – located in High Times café in Kensington Market – each class begins with a few tokes of marijuana via a vaporizer, which is passed around a circle.

The desired result is heightened relaxation, spiritual growth, and focus.

Often, a musician will play a guitar, adding to the chilled out vibe.

Health-conscious stoners will appreciate the use of the vaporizer as opposed to a pipe or rolled joints, which heats the hemp to create THC rather than burning it. It’s basically the “healthy” way to get high.

The company behind a plan to produce medical marijuana products in Owen Sound now intends to spend nearly triple its original estimate to retrofit its local facility.

Scott Boyes, president of the Canadian Bioceutical Corporation, said the projected price tag for capital work at the former PPG plant in Owen Sound’s industrial park has climbed from $5 million to $13 to $14 million.

The added costs will be required, he said, so the company can develop, produce and sell alternative forms of medical marijuana — such as cannabinoid-based oils, tinctures, creams and capsules — that meet strict pharmaceutical-level standards.

“Our strategy is to focus on becoming one of the new generation of producers,” he said Wednesday.

City council’s approval of a zoning bylaw amendment that would allow medical marijuana production facilities in certain areas of Owen Sound has been appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board.

Owen Sound resident Dustin McGregor plans to argue that the amendment “stifles small business,” contrary to the city’s official plan, and could put the city at risk of a lawsuit if current federal production regulations are deemed unconstitutional, according to documents submitted to city hall.

Council voted Monday night to notify the OMB that it stands behind its zoning amendment decision. It also authorized the city to retain lawyer Harold Elston to represent the city.

Hempearth is proud to be producing the world’s first hemp plane.

Ontario, Canada — Hempearth Group Ltd. (Hempearth) has a contract in place to build an aircraft made almost entirely out of hemp and aims to fly the hemp plane this Fall or next Spring from Kitty Hawk, N.C., site of the Wright Brothers’ historic take off. The hemp plane is a four-seater, two engine aircraft with a cruising speed a little over 210 miles per hour (340 kph), a wingspan of 36 feet (12 meters), that will be built from at least 75% hemp. And, the plan is for it to run completely on hemp biofuel. More information here: http://hempearth.net/the-hemp-plane

There has been one constant since the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the prohibition against possession of marijuana for medical reasons in 2000: the subsequent rules imposed by the federal government have been subject to repeated court challenges. Litigation around medical marijuana has heated up ever since the government changed the rules aound who can produce and supply it. Photo: Gordon Swanson/Shutterstock The courts have found the regulations that govern medical marijuana to be invalid on more than one occasion and there are two current proceedings before the courts that could again require the federal government to go back to the drawing board.

The first publicly-traded medical marijuana producer in Canada has found other ways to generate publicity

Medical marijuana producers in Canada are typically branded like pharmaceutical companies—clinical, staid and boring. Tweed is their hip counterpart. The company’s personality is more akin to that of a craft brewery.

“They have a really easy name to remember,” says Daniel Pearlstein, a life sciences analyst with M Partners, which covers the company. “It sounds like what people call it on the street.”

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They’re presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.