There won’t be wreaths of smoke wafting overhead at this weekend’s Cannabis Expo at the cavernous Vancouver Convention Centre West.

It’s all business for more than 130 industry exhibitors, who will welcome an expected 10,000 of the curious on Saturday and Sunday, a month after the federal government introduced new regulations governing medical marijuana use, and less than a year before the expected legalization of recreational use for adults.

For the marijuana industry in B.C. and Canada, it’s the calm before a commercial storm — selling pot for medicinal use will be dwarfed by the trade in pot for recreational users.

The Canadian government has quietly approved new drug regulations that will permit doctors to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade heroin to treat severe addicts who have not responded to more conventional approaches.

The move means that Crosstown, a trail-blazing clinic in Vancouver, will be able to expand its special heroin-maintenance program, in which addicts come in as many as three times a day and receive prescribed injections of legally obtained heroin from a nurse free. The program is the only one of its kind in Canada and the United States but is similar to the approach taken in eight European countries.

The influential Ontario Chamber of Commerce is urging Premier Kathleen Wynne to allow recreational marijuana to be sold by government-licensed private retailers as long as local municipalities approve.

In a letter being released Wednesday, the chamber’s president urges Wynne “to immediately begin a robust consultative process aimed at developing a regulatory framework for the distribution of recreational marijuana.”

Need some medical marijuana? There's an app for that.

An Alberta-based pot producer has launched a mobile app to make it easier for patients with a prescription to purchase federally-regulated medicinal weed.

Cam Battley, of Aurora Cannabis, said the idea was to give customers the same service as giant online retailers such as Amazon.

"As far as we know, it is the first legal app for Android and Apple for federally-approved legal medical cannabis," Battley said.

"The fact is that people live on their phones and tablets. They use them to shop for everything from consumer products and health products to medicine. It is an acknowledgment of the reality of how people operate today."

Canadians consume marijuana. They smoke it. They eat it. They use its extracts and derivatives.

Statistics Canada found that 43 per cent of Canadians over the age of 15 have tried the drug and 33.5 per cent have used it more than once.

Furthermore, in a 2015 poll by Forum Research just under one-fifth of participants, or 18 per cent, admitted to having consumed the drug in the past year, with an added 13 per cent saying they would be more likely to do so if it were legal.

And with Canada lurching towards legalization, many businesses are looking to get into the market, including Canada Post.

The Wild West of weed is on fire with entrepreneurial opportunities. Potpreneurs across America are legally growing, curing and cooking the skunky stuff in record numbers. As those who cultivate and sell the plant grow, so do the offshoot businesses sprouting up around them.

Business leaders have estimated sales in Ontario for recreational marijuana will range between $1 billion to $2 billion by 2024 should it be legalized by the federal government.

So, the economic stakes are high — both locally and across the nation — should pot be legalized as planned.

That is why the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber is among groups pushing the provincial government to get going on what needs to be done to ease the transition toward marijuana legalization.

“Whether you agree with the decision or not, the federal government is proceeding on this,” said local chamber CEO Matt Marchand. “That’s already been decided.

B.C. researchers are launching the country’s first large-scale clinical trial on marijuana as a treatment for a mental health condition, testing whether pot can ease the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Zach Walsh, a clinical psychologist at the University of B.C.’s Okanagan campus, is leading the study, which will put the anecdotal experiences of combat veterans to the test.

New report says post office could capitalize on legal pot sales through delivery and direct retail sales.

Could legalizing pot save Canada Post?

Canadians looking to use recreational marijuana could help boost the post office’s revenues and be part of the answer to its financial woes, a new report suggests.

“Through its currently unparalleled national delivery network, Canada Post stands to capture a large part of the recreational shipment volume,” says Canada Post in the Digital Age, written by the task force for the Canada Post Corporation review, released Monday.