Premier David Burt has expressed doubt over whether a new law to license cannabis production in Bermuda will get the royal assent from Governor Rena Lalgie, and says the island’s relationship with the United Kingdom would suffer serious damage. Burt told the House of Assembly there were indications that Lalgie would be unable to give assent to legislation that contravened Britain’s international obligations. But he added: “This legislation will pass . . . . If Her Majesty’s representative in Bermuda does not give assent to something that has been passed lawfully and legally under this local government, this will destroy the relationship that we have with the United Kingdom. (See also: Bermuda plans adult-use, medical cannabis industry)

Bermuda’s Government had “no intention” of tailoring its laws licensing cannabis production to fit with the UK’s conventions allowing the drug for medicinal use only. David Burt, the Premier, reiterated that legislation for legal cannabis in Bermuda is set to go before the legislature in the current session of Parliament. The statement came after the Premier’s return from the Joint Ministerial Council in London between the UK Government and elected heads of the Overseas Territories' A question mark hung over the cannabis legislation, passed by the House of Assembly but turned back by the Senate in the last parliamentary session, as to whether it would receive Royal Assent. (See also: A way out of trouble on cannabis reform)

California’s legal cannabis industry, not yet 4 years old, yearns for the same system of tying plants to the soil perfected by the French over centuries and a key to the marketing success of the state’s premium wine grape growers. The cornerstone of France’s appellation system is terroir — a word with no English equivalent but loosely translated as “sense of place” — based on the premise that soil, climate and topography endow grapes with unique characteristics.To qualify for an appellation of origin, basically a geographic identity, cannabis products would have to be made exclusively from plants grown in the ground, in open air and under nothing but sunshine until harvest. (See also: New California law gives regional title for marijuana branding)

Five years after cannabis legalization, California is awash with signs of an apparently booming industry. Californians can toke on Justin Bieber-branded joints and ash their blunts in Seth Rogen’s $95 ceramics. They can sip on THC-infused seltzers, relax inside a cannabis cafe, and get edibles delivered to their doors. But behind the flashy facade, the legal weed industry remains far from the law-abiding, prosperous sector many had hoped for. In fact, it’s a mess. Voters passed a law in November 2016 making recreational marijuana legal. But today, the vast majority of the market remains underground – about 80-90% of it, according to experts. (See also: ‘A farce of social equity’: California is failing its Black cannabis businesses)

California’s marijuana market is borrowing a page from the state’s world-famous wine industry thanks to a new law intended to help outdoor cannabis growers brand and market their products by highlighting where and how they’re produced. When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 67 on Sept. 30, the law established that any cannabis product claiming an “appellation of origin” from a California region must have been grown in the soil and with the sun from that region – in other words, without artificial light or shelter, such as a greenhouse or hoop house. California is leading the way with this legislation, and other West Coast states, including Oregon and Washington state, might take notice. Such designations can help smaller growers distinguish their cannabis.

California's legal pot market opens for business on Jan. 1. The day will be a milestone, but what exactly will happen then and, especially, in the weeks and months to come is unclear. Lori Ajax, the state's top pot regulator, has been at the center of the effort to establish rules for a legal pot economy valued at $7 billion. Businesses are required to have a local permit and a state license to open their doors for recreational sales, and that process has moved slowly. State law has specific guidelines for where not to light up, and they include being within 1,000 feet of a school or a daycare center when kids are around, or smoking while driving. (See also: Lawmakers, pot growers say California's marijuana cultivation rules favor big corporate farms)

In 2016, Californians voted to legalize recreational adult-use marijuana. Proponents of Proposition 64, including then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, argued that it would generate massive revenue, while decreasing illicit cannabis and drug cartel activity in California. Now, nearly six years later, it’s clear that promise has not been kept. While the state has collected billions in tax revenue from cannabis sales since legalization went into effect in 2018, billions more continue to pour into a thriving illicit market. A new report from cannabis website Leafly found that more than half of all cannabis sales in the state (55%) are in the illegal market. It means the product being sold hasn’t been subjected to the state’s rigorous testing and tracking regimen, and can contain harmful pesticides or other powerful narcotics.

Over the past year, you may have seen something called delta-8 THC or “delta 8” appear in convenience stores and pharmacies alongside CBD gummies, oils and lotions. Delta-8 THC is a hemp-derived compound that’s closely related to delta-9 THC – what’s commonly called THC and is the psychoactive component of cannabis that’s responsible for the high that users feel. Like garden variety marijuana, delta-8 THC can be vaped or eaten. However, it’s rarely smoked. Anecdotally, its fans swear by its benefits – that it helps with relaxation and pain relief without intense highs that can veer into anxiety or paranoia.

Psychosis is quite rare – fewer than three in 100 people will experience a psychotic episode in their lifetime. People who smoke or otherwise consume cannabis, especially in significant quantities, have a higher incidence. Some people have vulnerability, a genetic predisposition to psychosis, and cannabis can be a trigger, as can other things like trauma or amphetamines. Severe mental illness like schizophrenia tends to arise in late teens and early adulthood, the same time young people tend to experiment with drugs, so the psychosis can be coincidental. Finally, many people with severe mental illnesses that feature psychotic episodes self-medicate, with cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis.

The fight to legalize marijuana has never been easy, as evidenced by the recent collapse of months-long efforts in New Jersey and New York. A key issue in both is how to ensure that legalized cannabis doesn’t just create another privatized, corporate monopoly, but instead repairs the harm that has been done by the war on drugs. Legalizing cannabis, repairing the economy. Our guests say, reparations and restorative justice for workers in the budding cannabis industry need to be a part of the conversation. Featuring: Drug Policy Alliance‘s NY State Director Kassandra Frederique, Greenworker Cooperatives‘ Communications Director Raybblin Vargas, and Cannaclusive‘s Founder and CEO Mary Pryor.

La legalización de la marihuana ha reportado a las arcas públicas de Canadá 186 millones de dólares canadienses (139 millones de dólares estadounidenses) entre octubre de 2018 y marzo de 2019, según datos dados del organismo público Estadísticas Canadá (EC). Los impuestos especiales a la marihuana suponen un dólar extra por cada gramo. De esta cifra, un 25 % va a parar a las arcas federales y el resto, a las provinciales. Los impuestos a la marihuana legal están haciendo que muchos consumidores de cannabis sigan recurriendo a la compra de marihuana de fuentes no legalizadas. Los datos de EC establecen que, mientras que el precio medio de un gramo de marihuana legal en Canadá es de 10 dólares canadienses , en el mercado negro el precio es de 6,4 dólares canadienses.

As Canada prepares to legalize marijuana this summer, politicians are facing growing calls to grant a blanket amnesty for people convicted under the existing drug laws – many of whom belong to marginalized groups. Since the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was elected in 2015 on a manifesto promise to legalize cannabis, more than 15,000 people have been charged over marijuana-related offences – joining close to 500,000 Canadians with marijuana convictions on their criminal record. The Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty launched a petition asking the government to consider pardons for possession charges. The group hopes to gain at least 5,000 signatures by the end of May.

Hace cuatro meses, en el Senado de un país donde la guerra contra el narcotráfico ha dejado más de 250.000 muertos en poco más de una década, un empresario canadiense dedicado al negocio del cannabis dijo ante los congresistas: "Su localización en el mundo es perfecta, sus costos laborales son perfectos, su clima es perfecto (...) Dejen que las empresas privadas expandan sus negocios, que hagan lo que saben hacer". Los ojos de los grandes nombres en el negocio del cannabis están puestos en el Senado mexicano. Algunas empresas tienen cabilderos que recorren los pasillos de la Cámara alta con la esperanza de quedarse con una tajada de un negocio multimillonario.

El 17 de octubre de 2018 Canadá se convirtió en el segundo país en el mundo -después de Uruguay- en legalizar el uso recreativo de la marihuana. En ese momento, el optimismo se esparció entre los habitantes y vendedores de cannabis, generando una especie de "fiebre verde". Sin embargo, a más de un año de la puesta en marcha de la ley se han evidenciado una serie de deficiencias en cadena para adquirir y vender la hierba. Una de las principales preocupaciones es que el mercado negro de cannabis no ha desaparecido precisamente. Los impuestos especiales de un dólar por gramo y los costos de operar en una industria altamente regulada, generan que el cannabis legal aumente su precio esto hace que los consumidores prefieran comprar de manera ilegal.

Desde octubre del año pasado, Canadá legalizó el uso privado del cannabis. Este negocio se transformó en una mina de oro para muchos empresarios. El límite de posesión por persona es de 30 gramos. Ya previamente, Canadá era uno de los países con mayor consumo de marihuana per cápita en el mundo. El mercado negro se avalúa en cuatro mil millones de euros. "Todo el mercado está enloquecido por el cannabis", explica Mark Rendell. El periodista del diario The Globe and the Mail ha monitoreado por un año y medio la industria del cannabis. "No es normal que seamos pioneros en una industria. Pero debido a la legalización, es mucho más fácil para nosotros que los bancos y los accionistas financien el cannabis", explica Rendell.

While many Canadians have focused on the supply problems and overly optimistic business projections that have marred Ottawa's marijuana legalization project, it's also left behind some international loose ends that still haven't been tied up. Not all other countries have accepted Canada's right to forge a new path on cannabis law. And the ending of Canada's 95-year ban on cannabis appears to have accelerated the demise of a worldwide consensus and treaty regime that, for decades, underpinned the global war on drugs. A year after legalization, Canada remains in flagrant violation of UN drug treaties that it signed — an uncomfortable situation for a country that likes to see itself as a stickler for international laws and treaties.

If Canada’s licensed cannabis producers continue ramping up production at their current exponential pace, there will be more than enough pot to meet the government’s projected demand by the end of 2019, predicts one cannabis researcher who conducted an analysis of the government’s most recent data. While some have suggested shortages in the sector could last for years, Brock University professor Michael Armstrong argues that barring any unforeseen circumstances that supply concerns will be resolved much more quickly than that. Total legal production of cannabis began drastically increasing about six months before legalization, Armstrong notes, as evidenced by how quickly cannabis inventories were growing.

Canada became the second country to make it legal for adults to buy, grow and consume small amounts of marijuana. But it also made it a crime to give it to anyone younger than 19 or 18, depending on the province, and set a penalty of up to 14 years in prison for doing so. At the same time, the government began an $83 million public education campaign, much of it targeting Canadian youths, that warns of pot’s dangers. But persuading teenagers not to see legalization as a green light to use marijuana will be difficult, experts say, not to mention that past antidrug efforts have offered little evidence of success. And when it comes to marijuana and the teenage brain, the science is far from clear.

Before the new law came into force in October 2018, Statistics Canada started to estimate prices and the size of the illicit market, and to carry out quarterly surveys of Canadians’ cannabis usage. Earlier this month it released the fifth of these—the first before-and-after comparison of the same part of a year. The main finding was a rise in the number of Canadians who had used cannabis in the three months before the survey, of 27% compared with a year earlier. People are probably more willing to admit to getting lit once weed has been legalised. However, half of new cannabis users are aged over 45; use by under-25s, by contrast, did not rise significantly. Nor was there a significant increase in the number of Canadians who said they used daily or near-daily.

Business failures and consolidation failed to stop Canada’s stockpile of unsold cannabis from reaching a new high in the final quarter of 2022, the latest sign that shrinking prices and margins could continue to squeeze companies. Packaged and unpackaged inventory of dried cannabis jumped to an all-time high of 1.47 billion grams (3.2 million pounds) as of December 2022, according to the latest data from Health Canada, which tracks overall unsold stockpiles of licensed producers, wholesalers and retailers. That’s an increase from 1.3 billion grams in December 2021. Last year, Aurora Cannabis closed its flagship Aurora Sky facility in Edmonton, Alberta – one of the biggest in Canada.