The only licensed marijuana producer in New Brunswick says the number of legal growing operations in the country will need to increase before they can haldne the demand expected from recreational users legally purchasing pot.

Denis Arsenault of Moncton’s OrganiGram, the first licensed marijuana grower in Atlantic Canada, believes federal legislation allowing widespread sale could come before the end of 2017, but the just over two dozen legal producers country-wide would have trouble providing enough of the plant to go around.

Booming Alberta company supplies nearly 4,000 customers, and demand is climbing.

Tucked into the rolling hills of Alberta's ranch country, just down the road from the small town of Cremona, lies one of Canada's biggest medical marijuana operations.  

Just over an hour from Calgary, the Aurora Cannabis production facility is set back from the road, and ringed by barbed wire. 

Security is tight, inside and out.

​Inside the sprawling 55,000-square-foot facility, key cards are needed to enter and exit each room, and security cameras perched above doors monitor everything that goes on.

When Gillian FitzGibbon’s doctor suggested she try cannabis to reduce her chronic knee, hip and ankle pain, she figured anything was better than the cocktail of opioids she had been prescribed for years, medication that she said left her in an “abyss.”

As health-care providers sound the alarm over rising opioid addiction and the lack of available pain management alternatives, some patients like FitzGibbon — along with their physicians — are turning to cannabis derivatives for relief.

Liberal government hopes to introduce legislation to legalize marijuana in 2017.

Canada is lurching toward marijuana legalization, but the Liberals aren't being blunt about what the new law will mean for the average pot-friendly Canadian.

Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould announced on Thursday the launch of a task force to advise the Canadian government on how best to map its plan to legalize marijuana.

The task force report could give us a better sense of what the Liberals' law will look like. Still, the panel is just offering recommendations and the Liberals could always take another route.

What we know

When are we going to see new laws around marijuana in Canada?

High hopes among cannabis activists for an interim measure to decriminalize pot also goes up in smoke before serious work on legalization has begun.

With the feds scheduling a pot announcement on the day before the Canada Day long weekend, there were high hopes among cannabis activists. Last time the government made a major announcement on marijuana, it chose 420 as the date.

Thursday morning, the government of Canada announced that it has created a task force that will be charged with developing a framework for legalizing recreational marijuana nationwide.

The move marks a “crucial step” in the legalization process, Rafik Souccar, a top law enforcement official on the Canadian task force, said in a press conference.

Legalizing recreational marijuana was a main part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s campaign platform, and his government has repeatedly signaled that it would be making a move toward legalization in the coming years.

A Nova Scotia medical marijuana dispensary has opened up shop in New Brunswick’s. Its owner says he’s already taken on 50 clients.Malachy McMeekin operates four medical marijuana dispensaries in Nova Scotia. He opened Tasty Budd’s in Riverview on June 24.“It just shows the clear demand for it,” McMeekin said.

McMeekin says he expanded to New Brunswick because New Brunswick patients were traveling to his province to get their prescriptions filled.

A groundbreaking 20-year study investigated the links between tobacco, cannabis and lung function, and found that while tobacco caused adverse effects, cannabis did not. As a result of this study and others like it, healthcare is beginning to pay attention, and health insurers are even starting to cover medical cannabis costs!

In 2012, a groundbreaking scientific study (Association Between Marijuana Exposure and Pulmonary Function Over 20 Years, Pletcher MJ et al.) was published on the effects of cannabis smoke on lung function compared to that of tobacco smoke.

If the outdoor farmer is to prosper in a regulated market, now is the time to start educating the public about the benefits of sustainably grown cannabis.

If you have ever walked into a field of sunflowers, then you can imagine the hypnotic beauty of a sun grown cannabis garden. 

The sunlight flickers between the broad leaves as resin sparkles on the flowers, and the sounds of nature are almost in congress with the good energy such a field evokes. Most of these fields are in remote and secret places, amongst the pines in the north, in the swamps further to the south, hidden between the rows of corn in many a farmer’s field, and on the sides of mountainous hills further west.  

Canopy Growth Corp., the largest of Canada's publicly traded marijuana companies, is preparing to export its expertise through a new Brazilian partnership.

Canopy's Bedrocan subsidiary and its Brazilian partners have created a new company to import proprietary varieties of cannabis into Brazil — a country with a population of 200 million.

Initially, Bedrocan Brazil will import cannabis products into Brazil from Canada or the Netherlands.

Eventually, the company will establish domestic cultivation facilities in Brazil using Bedrocan's genetic material and cultivation technology.

The Canadian company will also partner with Sao Paulo-based Entourage Phytolab SA to develop medical cannabis products for the Brazilian and international markets.