Get ready for a new hot button municipal election issue.

It turns out one of the first decisions the new Hamilton council elected in October will need to make is whether or not to opt out of the Ontario government’s plan to sell marijuana through local stores.

Escondido, California, Aug 30, 2018 (Newsfile Corp via COMTEX) -- MARIJUANA COMPANY OF AMERICA INC. (otc pink:MCOA) ("MCOA" or the "Company"), an innovative hemp and cannabis corporation, and its joint venture partner Global Hemp Group Inc. (cse:GHG) (otc pink:GBHPF) (GHG) (the "Partners") are pleased to provide an update on their CBD hemp farming joint venture in New Brunswick, Canada (the "Project").

Dryer InstallationDrying of the biomass is an important first step in the extraction of the cannabinoids from the hemp plant. The partners are pleased to announce that the Project's industrial scale dryer from Cann Systems was delivered last week and has now been installed.

TORONTO -- Cronos Group Inc.'s shares lost 28 per cent of their value Thursday after a U.S. short-seller accused the cannabis company of withholding information that could be useful to investors.

The Toronto-based company's stock ended the day at $11.77 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, down $4.60 or 28 per cent, eliminating about a week's worth of gains since Aug. 23.

About 14.7 million shares were traded on the TSX, far above the daily average.

Thursday's decline followed a Citron Research report -- published by short-short seller Andrew Left -- that said Cronos has purposely not disclosed the size of distribution agreements with provinces because they are "so small they could never justify the premium investors are paying for the stock."

Lloyd’s of London is to enter the cannabis insurance market, offering cover in Canada to people who produce, distribute and sell it.

The Canadian Cannabis Act, which comes into force in October, allows recreational use of marijuana. The law was passed earlier this summer.

In a note to underwriters, Lloyd’s said: “It is anticipated that this legalisation of cannabis-related activities will give rise to new opportunities for insurers considering writing related risks.”

Insurers at Lloyd’s have been looking for new ways to grow as traditional markets, such as property catastrophe insurance, have been hit by years of falling prices and higher claims because of natural disasters.

VANCOUVER—Questions around how consumer data will be protected by cannabis retailers continue to loom large for some Canadians.

And those questions are becoming more complicated as legalization approaches and a number of key concerns remain unanswered.

As an employer or employee, how prepared do you think your organizationis for cannabis legalization on October 17? When New York–based advisory firm Mercer posed that question in a survey of Canadian employers, only one third of 366 respondents said they were ready.

Meanwhile, in a separate poll of 1,008 Canadian workers, just 26 percent felt that their bosses were ready for the change.

lberta was the first province to begin its policy development for cannabis legalization. In June 2016, the government began by commissioning a massive evidence synthesis — the Cannabis Evidence Series — covering five key topics: health effects and harms, medical cannabis, advertisement and communication regulations, experience with legalization in other jurisdictions, and the current Canadian context. It was published in December 2016. This fed directly into the Alberta cannabis framework, which is the beginnings of the proposed legislation that will eventually regulate cannabis production, sales and use.

With marijuana legalization less than two months away, it is unclear whether Abbotsford residents will be able to buy non-medical pot locally on Oct. 17. But they want the option to do so.

Where can you legally enjoy your cannabis in Quebec, come October 17th?

Despite being one of the strictest provinces when it comes to cannabis regulations, Quebec’s Bill 157 stipulates that consuming cannabis in public is allowed anywhere smoking tobacco is permitted – the only exception being on university and college campuses. So far vaping and smoking are treated in the same manner.