Manulife Financial Corp. is retooling its approach to medical cannabis, unveiling a new benefits program on Tuesday that will also offer patients access to virtual support from a trained team at Shoppers Drug Mart Corp.

Companies have been slow to offer coverage for medical marijuana in their group benefits policies, and Manulife is trying to change that by treating cannabis more like any other drug and adding a pharmacy to the process to help assist patients and control usage. The move also sees Shoppers elbow its way into the nascent cannabis space, inserting itself into the existing cannabis dispensing practices that today bypass pharmacies altogether.

Ontario will have a cannabis retail system open for business when recreational marijuana is legalized across the country in less than three months, says Finance Minister Vic Fedeli.

“We are going to be operational by Oct. 17,” Fedeli said Monday as questions swirled about how the province will sell weed following reports private retailers are being tapped instead of the government stores planned by the previous Liberal administration.

When Canada officially launches its recreational marijuana market later this year, the federal government will provide the nation’s cannabis farmers with some of the same funding opportunities as other green thumb industrialists.

Earlier this month, agricultural ministers representing every level of government decided during their annual meeting in Vancouver that the companies producing cannabis plants for both the recreational and medicinal sector should qualify for a portion of the agricultural support offered to traditional farmers. Canada provides dozens of programs and partnerships intended to help the agricultural community stay innovative and prosperous.

The federal government says it is not interested in decriminalizing any drugs beyond marijuana, despite calls from Canada's two largest cities to consider the measure.

As the opioid epidemic washes over the country, Montreal and Toronto are urging the federal government to treat drug use as a public health issue, rather than a criminal one.

Montreal's public health department has just thrown its support behind a report released recently by Toronto's board of health which urges the federal government to decriminalize all drugs. A Health Canada report last month found that nearly 4,000 Canadians died from an apparent opioid overdose in 2017, including 303 opioid overdose-related deaths in Toronto.

The City of Calgary is starting its review of 261 applications it has received so far for retail marijuana stores and hopes to have the initial process wrapped up by Aug. 10. 

It's unlikely all those who applied to open a store will get the green light. 

"Similar to other municipalities, we will be making decisions based on the order in which the applications were received, but that is our standard business practice here at the City of Calgary," said Brandy MacInnis, senior special projects officer with the city.

Rules limit where the stores can go, with established distances from schools, emergency shelters, pawnshops, payday loan operators, places of worship and other marijuana retailers. 

High Tide Ventures Inc. ("High Tide" or the "Company") today announced that it has recently entered into multiple non-binding memorandums of understanding ("MOUs") to supply the Saskatchewan market on a wholesale basis for a combined total of up to 9,500 kilograms of cannabis products over the next year, as available.  High Tide is in the process of becoming a licensed wholesaler of cannabis products in the province of Saskatchewan.  The MOUs are with FV Pharma Inc. ("FV Pharma"), Maple Leaf Green World Inc. ("Maple Leaf"), Sundial Growers Inc. ("Sundial") and The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc. ("Supreme").

Unlike humans, rats can’t vomit.

But that didn’t stop researchers from using the rodents in a study that laid the groundwork for understanding how a cannabis component that doesn’t get you high could eliminate nausea for cancer patients going through chemotherapy.

The non-psychoactive component in pot, cannabidiol (CBD) can suppress the trigger for nausea, according to an academic paper published Tuesday by researchers at the University of Guelph and the University of Calgary.

Doctors already prescribe capsules of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the psychoactive component in cannabis that give users a euphoric feeling – to treat chemotherapy-induced vomiting and nausea, but this is the first time CBD has shown potential to treat the symptoms, the authors say.

The Crypto Report

IBM (NYSE:IBM) has teamed up with foreign-exchange settlement provider CLS to launch a blockchain app store for financial services, as per a Reuters report.

Investors in the marijuana sector are on a wild ride, and those who missed the huge rally in the past year are wondering if the recent weakness in some of the big names is an opportunity to finally get in the game. Let’s take a look at Canopy Growth Corp. (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC) to see if it deserves to be in your portfolio. Diversification Canopy started out as a supplier of medical marijuana. That market is still the main driver of revenue, but the pot of gold investors see at the end of the rainbow is the rapidly approaching…

Hydroponics, robotics, high-powered lights — growing weed on an industrial level is a serious business. But according to one local independent grower, getting cannabis to flower is as simple as tending to a house plant.

Tom Neumann, who has a medical licence to grow and consume on his farm in Ardrossan east of Edmonton, thinks anyone who is curious should give growing a shot when it becomes legal on Oct. 17. Each household is permitted to grow four plants.

“It’s no different than growing any other plant,” Neumann said. “My parents managed apartments when I was a kid, and my brother used to grow (marijuana plants) in the hallway.”