With over 29 years of experience in alcohol toxicology, forensic scientist James Wigmore says calling K2, ‘synthetic marijuana’ is a complete misnomer. “It bears more in common with drugs like LSD. It’s more like a psychedelic, and can, at best, be described as ‘cannabis on acid’.”

Frequently sold in the black market and in less legally-regulated smoke shops, synthetic cannabinoids are psychoactive designer drugs that can either be sprayed on dry, smokable plant materials or sold as liquids for vapourizing. Their widespread use has become a public health nightmare in recent years.

The legalization of cannabis in Canada is about to bring big changes not just for medical cannabis companies but for hemp growers as well.

Shopify (SHOP), Canada's home-grown e-commerce firm, could become a hot marijuana stock owing to the country's legalization of recreational cannabis, says an analyst.

Recreational cannabis becomes legal in Canada Oct. 17. As it does, the Shopify(SHOP) platform could help drive merchandise volume and revenue, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Monika Garg said in a note to clients. The company's headquarters is in Ottawa, Canada's capital.

A cannabis firm is looking to hire five pot aficionados from across the country to sample the company's wares and get paid to do it.

Toronto-based company AHLOT is offering $50 an hour to five "cannabis connoisseurs" to sample various strains of marijuana.

With legalization scheduled for Oct. 17, the bud brain trust will form the company's officially titled Cannabis Curation Committee, reporting back on characteristics and quality.

AHLOT says the canna-committee will help determine what pot products go into its sample pack, which will comprise several strains from various licensed producers.

Shares of British Columbia-based cannabis producer Tilray Inc. surged nearly 30 per cent on Tuesday after the marijuana company received a key approval related to a clinical trial in the United States.

While Tilray’s stock has enjoyed a heady rise since its initial public offering in July, Tuesday’s staggering gain — shares closed up more than US$34 at US$154.98 on the Nasdaq — was alone equivalent to more than double the company’s IPO price of US$17.

The shares have now increased more than 800 per cent since the offering, propelling Tilray’s market valuation to about US$14.4 billion, well ahead of previous market leader Canopy Growth Corp., which closed Tuesday with a market cap of around US$11.5 billion.

Canada’s measure of real gross domestic product will get a boost after the legalization of marijuana adds as much as $8 billion to the country’s economy, according to Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Statistics Canada will begin including “licensed and unlicensed cannabis activity” in its economic calculations after the Oct. 17 roll out, which will have an impact on measured growth rates in the final quarter of 2018 and first quarter 2019, TD says. The bank cautions that the increase to growth is actually an accounting illusion, because some of the cannabis-related trade already existed in the economy but wasn’t formally captured in most measures of output.

Doubling the staff; tripling the number of grow rooms; quintupling production.

These are just some of the goals that Ram Davloor, the general manager of medicinal cannabis producer 7ACRES, shares with employees in a company strategy session ahead of the legalization of recreational marijuana on Oct. 17 in Canada.

“All of you who have come in right now are coming into a business that’s right at the very beginning,” Mr. Davloor tells the three dozen employees gathered at company headquarters in Kincardine, a municipality of about 11,000 on Lake Huron. “And this industry is going to be around for the next 200 years. So all of you here, if you think you are coming late, you are wrong.”

With the Oct. 17 legalization of cannabis looming, many parents are at a loss about how best to approach the issue of pot usage with their kids — and about the place, if any, for the newly legal substance at home.

“I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, about how to start broaching the topic,” says Ainslie, a Sudbury mother of two who did not want her full name used.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says, adding that her eldest child, now 12, is keenly aware decriminalization is coming. Ainslie’s uncertainty is being felt in countless homes across the country, says Dr. Karen Leslie, an adolescent medicine specialist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

A cannabis firm is looking to hire five pot aficionados from across the country to sample the company's wares and get paid to do it.

Toronto-based company AHLOT is offering $50 an hour to five "cannabis connoisseurs" to sample various strains of marijuana.

With legalization scheduled for Oct. 17, the bud brain trust will form the company's officially titled Cannabis Curation Committee, reporting back on characteristics and quality.

AHLOT says the canna-committee will help determine what pot products go into its sample pack, which will comprise several strains from various licensed producers.

The Canadian recreational marijuana market is set to open in one month, but the big news in the sector over the course of the next year might be focused on the United States.

Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC) is a market leader in the emerging global marijuana sector, and while much of the focus has been on the company’s partnership with Constellation Brands, which owns Corona and now has a 38% stake in Canopy Growth, the medical side of the industry remains a core focus for Canopy Growth in Canada and internationally.