It was an action-packed day in the marijuana news today, with a couple of marijuana stocks (HEXO stock and CRON stock) shooting off in opposite directions, while the New Jersey marijuana legalization effort falters.

We’ll first take a look at what’s happening in the Garden State.

New Jersey marijuana legalization seemed like a sure thing when I last wrote about it. After all, it had the support of the governor, whose party had control of both state houses.

Local police are coming across less impaired drivers on county roadways.

Comparing 2017 to 2018, Strathcona County RCMP experience a six per cent decrease in impaired driving offences, from 822 to 751 files.

Impaired operational offences include drunk driving, drug-impaired, and breathalyzer refusals.

“People know the consequences and the risks and possibilities about not only harming themselves, and somebody else, but also the legal and financial consequences of getting caught for impaired driving, so it’s really about education and having people finding alternate ways to get home, whether that be taxis, Uber, or some picking them up,” local Const. Chantelle Kelly explained the decrease.

These days, almost everyone wants to get in on the pot profit train. With marijuana having been legalized in October of last year and several cannabis producers having posted phenomenal revenue growth afterward, it seems like cannabis is having its moment.

In this environment, it’s natural to be curious about major cannabis companies like Canopy Growth Corp  (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC) and Aurora Cannabis Inc (TSX:ACB)(NYSE:ACB). As the nation’s largest marijuana producers, they’re eating up more marijuana revenue than the competition.

Before Canadian hemp and cannabis growers have even begun to capitalize on new markets, they could have new and novel competition.

University of California synthetic biologists have engineered brewer’s yeast to produce marijuana’s main ingredients — mind-altering THC and non-psychoactive CBD — as well as novel cannabinoids not found in the plant itself. Feeding only on sugar, the yeast is an easy and cheap way to produce pure cannabinoids that today are costly to extract from the buds of the plants.

“For the consumer, the benefits are high-quality, low-cost CBD and THC: you get exactly what you want from yeast,” said Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley professor. “It is a safer, more environmentally friendly way to produce cannabinoids.”

The law of big numbers makes it hard for large-cap companies to generate breakneck sales growth and market-trouncing returns, and that can make investing in small-cap stocks advantageous.

Ontario's first legal cannabis retail shops are set to open their doors next week, but some of the 25 licence holders are still wading through the lengthy approval process and might not be ready for business.

Ontario is the last province in the country to open brick-and-mortar cannabis stores since Canada legalized recreational marijuana on Oct. 17, 2018. Currently, pot can only be legally purchased at Ontario's government-run online store. 

In Toronto, only one of the five shops set to open in the city have been issued their retail store authorization from the province as of Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the The Hunny Pot, at 202 Queen St. W., confirmed to CBC Toronto that it will be open for business on April 1 at 9 a.m.

Investors have never been more excited about marijuana stocks, and the returns that early movers into the cannabis space have produced have been nothing short of sensational. Yet as with any other industry, not all pot stocks are created equal, and smart investors are trying to separate out the best prospects from the also-rans to make the most of their marijuana opportunity.

McMaster University has launched a new "science of cannabis" program — which the school says is one of the first post-secondary programs in Canada that focuses on the science of pot, alongside its benefits, risks and harms.

It's a three-course program offered entirely online through McMaster continuing education, and is available to people working in the health, education, public service, and social and community services sectors across the country. These are people who will deal with marijuana on the front lines, but also be responsible for forging policy change about it.

Newstrike Brands Ltd. (TSX-V:HIP) (“Newstrike” or the “Company”), is pleased to announce that Up Cannabis Inc. (“Up Cannabis”), its wholly-owned subsidiary, has entered into an agreement with Cannabis NB as a licensed producer to supply cannabis.

“We are very excited to announce this partnership with Cannabis NB,” said Jay Wilgar, CEO of both Newstrike and Up Cannabis.

A recent study using data from more than 230,000 questionnaires by Canadian high school students in grades 9 to 12 found that almost 10 per cent reported having used the drug at least once per week in 2017-18, with a further 18 per cent saying they had used it at least once in the last year.

Both weekly and occasional use reached their lowest points in 2014-15 (9 percent and 15 percent respectively) and have since been rising steadily.

"The problem was developing while legalization was being discussed, but well before concrete steps to change the law were taken," said lead author Alex Zuckermann, a post-doctoral fellow with the Public Health Agency of Canada working in the School of Public Health and Health Systems.