Whether we like it or not, marijuana will be legal in Canada on Oct. 17.

Concerns about youth having easier access to the drug and people driving while high, still linger. Only time will tell how the legalization will impact public safety. For over a year now there has been relatively easy access to medical cannabis through dispensaries in Alderville. Dispensaries such as Medicine Wheel Natural Healing offer people a chance to learn more about how cannabis can help with certain ailments. Alternatives, such as cannabis without the high attached, are offered and popular with seniors. Many people say cannabis offers relief for a host of ailments. Medicine Wheel Natural Healing Rob Stevenson said it helps relieve his anxiety. Others find help with insomnia, MS and pain.

After years of marijuana being illegal, it may take time for people to come around to the change. For the last century there has been a stigma attached to using cannabis, however, history shows the plant has long been used for healing.

The first evidence of a medicinal use of cannabis resin dates back to 2,000 BC in China. The medicinal uses described in the book, Pên-ts’ao Ching, include treatment for menstrual fatigue, gout, rheumatism, malaria, constipation and absent-mindedness, and to anesthetize patients during surgical operations, according to Historical and Cultural Uses of Cannabis and the Canadian Marijuana Clash, Report to the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, April 2002.

There is some evidence cannabis was used in North America before Europeans arrived. There are some North American Indigenous groups, particularly in Mexico, who have a history of using cannabis and continue to this day.

In the mid to late 1800s cannabis became quite popular with physicians throughout North America prescribing it for a variety of conditions including rheumatism, epilepsy, migraine attacks, epilepsy, depression, as a muscle relaxant, to subdue restlessness and anxiety, and distract a patient’s mind in terminal illness. Oddly enough, those are many of the same alignments cannabis is used for today.

Back in the late 1800s cannabis became so common it was available over the counter in drug stores.

Slowly attitudes changed, however, when in the 1890s some doctors suggested the potency of cannabis was too variable, and individual responses to orally ingested cannabis seemed unpredictable. These concerns remain today.

And now, in a few months the drug will be legal. It remains to be seen how the new rules will impact dispensaries in Alderville but hopefully a resolution that works for both the government and those along the "green mile" can be reached.