Of all of the promises the Liberals made in the lead-up to last year’s election, one would have thought that legalizing marijuana would be an easy one to keep, as it would be pretty easy to do.

The basis for marijuana’s illegality in Canada is its inclusion in several schedules of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA). If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is serious about his election promise, he should take the obvious first step and propose legislation that would remove marijuana from the CDSA. Regardless of what marijuana legalization scheme is dreamed up over the next couple of years, this will need to happen. The sooner it does, the better.

Medical marijuana dispensaries are not new in Canada. In fact, they aren’t even legal. But that is not stopping people from opening them, and two new dispensaries will appear in the Maritimes in Canada.

The first new medical marijuana dispensary is already open in St. John’s, New Brunswick. It has been opened in the Churchill Park area and is owned by Dr. Danial Schecter. Schecter already owns four other dispensaries where people can purchase medical marijuana in other areas of Canada.

image: http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/medical-marijuana-67...

After a successful court battle to shut down one of Don Briere’s illegal pot shops in Abbotsford, the city is now asking a judge to outlaw his remaining franchise and ban the cannabis entrepreneur from operating in the community.

The City of Abbotsford filed a petition this week to stop Mr. Briere, owner of the largest chain of dispensaries in Canada, or any of his partners from running a pot shop in the city without a valid business licence – something the mayor says Mr. Briere will never obtain as long as marijuana remains illegal. The city is also asking a judge to force Mr. Briere’s business to pay all outstanding fines, which bylaw officers have been levying almost daily as they ticket the store on South Fraser Way for operating illegally.

Dispensaries technically aren't legal according to Health Canada, but many police forces leave them alone

Craig Gaudet of Summerside, P.E.I., hopes to open the Island's first medical marijuana dispensary this April.Gaudet says he already supplies medical marijuana to people who have approval in P.E.I., but wants to make it easier for others to get medical marijuana at one central location.  

He told CBC he's already picked out a location — on Water Street in Summerside. He's hoping to open in April. 

At least once a week, I hear from patients that smoking marijuana helps them to relax and to sleep. I know that other clinicians hear the same thing because they ask me about it at insomnia workshops. Does cannabis really improve sleep?

Several studies done in the 1970s examined the effects of smoked marijuana on objective sleep patterns, measured using polysomnography. This method of overnight recording involves the tracking of brain waves, eye movements and muscle tone in order to distinguish the sleep stages and their pattern of occurrence throughout the night.

Cannabis legalization is coming in Canada and with it is coming a new business sector. Economic growth, tax revenue and job creation are the exciting upside of this emerging industry. What does this mean for jobs?

Let's look at a U.S. example. Colorado is one of four states with recreational cannabis sales and made $996-million dollars in tax revenue in 2015. That's almost a billion dollars, people! Along with that came a budding job market and a decreased unemployment rate.

Types of Jobs

Like other businesses, the cannabis industry will have a need for traditional roles in areas like finance, marketing, human resources, operations and IT.

(AFP) – France and Canada have the highest percentage of 15-year-old pot smokers among 42 well-off nations surveyed by the World Health Organization, the UN agency said in a report Tuesday.

When it comes to policing marijuana, France is far from the most laid-back country in Europe, so the findings come as something of a surprise.

Amsterdam flaunts its cannabis cafes and Barcelona its private reefer clubs, but neither the Netherlands nor Spain were among the top eight nations in which teens admitted they had used cannabis in the last 30 days, according to the study, based on data from 2014.

Fifteen percent of 15-year-olds in France — slightly more boys than girls — said they had indulged, with Canada’s young stoners close behind.

I had someone ask me the other day why I support the use of medicinal marijuana. “We could have kids and innocent people overdosing, and that alone makes it unworthy of any support,” she said. That was sort of the Cliff Notes version of a very long and drawn out conversation I had with a very well-meaning, yet totally uneducated person regarding medicinal marijuana. This person could not understand why parents would administer something to their children without clear dosage guidelines, and when an overdose could cause them to die.

After mailing out dime bags to Canadian members of Parliament earlier this year, British Columbia weed activist and former New Democratic Party candidate Dana Larsen is expanding his pot giveaway to tokers from coast to coast.

Today, Larsen pledged to send free weed seeds to anyone wanting to plant a cannabis "victory garden" this spring. He says it's an effort to put pressure on the feds to keep their election promise and end pot prohibition.

Two of the leading Canadian companies that help veterans file reimbursement claims for medicinal marijuana say the spike in payments from the federal government over the past couple of years comes as no surprise.

Trauma Healing Centers and Marijuana for Trauma were responding to Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr launching an internal program review.

CBC News reported Monday that Hehr wants answers following a nearly 12-fold increase in the number of veterans turning to the government to pay for their medically prescribed marijuana since 2013-2014.

Hehr said he was shocked to find there was "no policy developed by the former government around the use of medical marijuana."