A clear majority of Canadians want the federal government to issue pardons to fellow citizens who have a criminal record for marijuana possession, a new poll has found.

The survey stands to buttress the call of marijuana activists, lawyers and politicians who argue that the old criminal records will be a legal anomaly once marijuana is legalized for recreational use by all adults.

The federal government tabled legislation last month that aimed to legalize marijuana by the middle of next year. Despite widespread pressure, the government has refused to call on law enforcement to stop charging marijuana users with simple possession while the legislation goes through Parliament, or to promise an amnesty for past convictions after the adoption of the new law.

A new industry is about to take root in Kelowna. Valens Agritech has just received approval from the federal government to grow commercial quantities of medical marijuana at its 17,000 square foot facility.

The company expects to soon start growing about 4,800 plants to produce about 2,000 kilograms of pot annually.

“As soon as we can assure everyone we’re 100 per cent ready to go we’ll start,” said CEO Tyler Robson. “So it’s almost imminent at this point.”

The company will first produce medical marijuana products and then move into the recreational market when marijuana is legalized, likely later this year.

The marijuana industry, and marijuana stocks for that matter, have been expanding by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. What was once a completely taboo industry has become a thriving source of legal growth, at least in some states.

According to a Gallup poll from the mid-1990s, just 25% of respondents were in favor of seeing recreational weed legalized nationally. Mind you, this was during the height of the War on Drugs campaign in America. As of 2016, an all-time high of 60% of respondents wanted to see cannabis legalized for adult use across the country, per Gallup. An even larger figure, 93%, wants medical cannabis legalized nationally, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.

Medical cannabis may be effective in managing chronic pain and inflammation and in treating neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. It is also said to be a viable treatment for epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, for sleep disorders, and chronic cancer pain, among other maladies.

Although research is ongoing, marijuana reportedly works with the endocannabinoid system in the body to modulate levels of pain and anxiety, which gives it the ability to alleviate symptoms of a wide range of disorders.

Although the cannabis industry is the fastest growing industry in the world, investors need to be selective and conduct thorough due diligence before investing.

When it comes to the cannabis industry, it all starts with the management team and it is important than ever to know who you are investing in. The emergence of the cannabis industry has led to an influx in the number of publicly traded companies focused on this incredible growth sector.

Although some of these companies may wow you with exciting investor presentations, attractive business model and remarkable high growth estimates; don’t believe everything you read!

After two decades in the pharmaceutical industry, Vic Neufeld entered the cannabis space in 2014 as the CEO of the low-cost, large-scale cannabis producer Aphria.

What makes your company different from others in the cannabis space?

There are three components that differentiate Aphria from others in the industry: First, our strategic growth plan is factual, a reality and committed. This includes a four-part expansion of our facility in Leamington, Ontario, which will increase our greenhouse footprint from 100,000 square feet to 1 million square feet by August 2018. The expansion will give us the capacity to supply more than 75,000 kg of high quality cannabis at one of the lowest costs in the industry.

You can legally use marijuana in the state of Washington, and soon you likely will be able to use marijuana across the entire country of Canada.

And yet, if you are traveling from Canada into Washington and you admit to a border officer that you have smoked marijuana in the past, you can get blocked from coming into the U.S. And not just for now, but forever.

Welcome to the latest contradiction between local, state and federal policy when it comes to marijuana. It’s such a mess that only one area of the economy seems certain to benefit.

“I’m expecting my business to boom,” immigration attorney Len Saunders told The Sacramento Bee.

Moral Turpitude

Sales of most medical marijuana products from Hydropothecary Corp. will resume after the Gatineau medical marijuana grower announced that it had recalled products affected by the discovery of trace amounts of an unapproved pesticide.

Hydropothecary announced the recall Tuesday morning, saying it was still searching for the source of the contamination at its facility in Masson-Angers, about 40 kilometres northeast of Ottawa.

The company voluntarily stopped all sales two weeks ago after a Health Canada spot check found the pesticide myclobutanil on plant samples.

Workers at a medical marijuana dispensary in Toronto’s east end have joined Unifor, the country’s largest private-sector union.

Forty workers — including reception, production, supervisors and packaging and retail staff — at the Broadview Avenue location of Canna Clinic are now represented by the union.

Unifor says it’s believed to be the first time that marijuana dispensary workers in Canada have unionized.

Marijuana dispensaries are currently illegal in Canada. The only legal way for Canadian patients to purchase medical marijuana is directly from Health-Canada licensed producers, who ship it via mail.

Unifor president Jerry Dias said all workers have a right to unionize, regardless of an industry’s status.