Ottawa based cannabis retailer, Stash & Co, has unveiled a virtual AI budtender that will offer customers personal product recommendations based on their preferred taste, effects, and potency.

Cheap land may be driving a proliferation of grow-ops in rural eastern Ontario, one that's seen Ontario Provincial Police charge dozens of people and seize tens of millions of dollars of illegal cannabis in just over two months.

In that time, the region's seen 18 drug busts that have led to 126 people arrested on charges that they illegally grew cannabis.

Nearly 59,000 plants were seized in the busts — an approximate street value of at least $70 million — along with hundreds of kilograms of processed cannabis, guns, cash and production equipment.

Police estimate each plant is worth between $1,200 and $1,400. The raids took place between July 29 and Oct. 2, at mostly rural addresses within a few hundred kilometres of Ottawa.

Home cannabis cultivation has been legal for adult use since 2018, and for medical use for years before federal legalization came into force.

But Brighton, Ontario’s medical cannabis users who grow their own medicine may soon find themselves in a difficult position, thanks to their neighbours’ complaints.

Canadian researchers have found the oral synthetic cannabinoids nabilone and dronabinol contribute to negative respiratory health events, including death, in older people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

COPD covers two types of chronic diseases — namely emphysema chronic bronchitis — where the lung’s airways become swollen and partly blocked, reports The Lung Association. “COPD gets worse over time. It cannot be cured, but it can be treated and managed.”

Aurora Cannabis Inc. handed out millions in compensation and salary increases to executives as the company was laying off more than 1,000 workers and reporting billions in losses.

The Edmonton-based cannabis company's management proxy circular released this week ahead of the company's annual meeting in November shows all six of its named executive officers — a company's most highly compensated and prominent workers — took home larger salaries or saw a spike in share- or option-based awards and other incentive plans.

For some, the increases for the fiscal year ended June 30 doubled the value of the compensation they received the year prior and tripled what they received a few years ago.

Legal recreational cannabis is beginning to gain ground in its fight against the illicit market, according to new Ontario Cannabis Store data.

A report released by the provincial pot distributor Wednesday revealed that between April and June, legal sources of cannabis made up 25.1 per cent of the total market, an increase from 24.7 per cent in the previous quarter.

The average price of dried flower per gram on OCS.ca fell to $7.05 including taxes during the same period, beating the average price of cannabis on sale through illegal mail-order marijuana sites, which reached $7.98.

"This quarter marks a milestone for the sector on the critical front of pricing," said chief commercial officer Cheri Mara in the report.

On September 1, the AGCO announced the Government of Ontario’s direction to double the pace of cannabis Retail Store Authorizations (RSA) beginning this fall, from 20 to 40 per month.

The results are in from more than two months of public consultations by Health Canada regarding cannabis health products, with more than 60 per cent of respondents indicating that they would be interested in such items.

One Chatham resident took the law into his own hands this weekend to protect his precious homegrown pot patch from a pesky thief.

The grower, a homeowner on Park Street, realized that a man was trying to steal his legally-cultivated cannabis plants just after 9 p.m. on Friday, September 25, Chatham Daily News reports.