Liberal candidate Bill Blair may now be in favour of legalizing marijuana but the national chief’s organization he often boasts having led is certainly not.

“Our position has not changed,” Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) spokesman Tim Smith said Monday.

No longer Toronto’s chief of police, and now a federal Liberal nomination hopeful, Blair’s position is clearly different than his chief of police brethren.

With the City of Vancouver looking at new rules to regulate the booming retail marijuana business, one of the hurdles some pot shops will face is police background checks of their operators. 

CBC decided to do its own background checks and quickly found some local operators have had serious run-ins with the law, including instances not involving the marijuana business. In one case, two of the operators of the Sea to Sky Alternative Healing Society — well aware their police involvement could back to haunt them — have removed themselves as directors of the pot dispensary at least on paper. 

They say they welcome Vancouver's move toward regulation of the city's 80-plus pot dispensaries. 

So You Want to Work in the Medical Marijuana Industry

Congratulations -- your timing couldn’t be better! Last year, U.S. medical cannabis was the fastest-growing industry in the largest economy in the world. Many states have had their industry more than double despite their program having already existed for several years.

The rapid growth means there is, or soon will be, a place for you this industry, and your first job is to keep looking until you find it. Be ready to meet a ton of new people full of passion and exciting ideas. Try to interview as much as you can to prepare for this opportunity – as the saying goes, practice makes perfect, especially with someone you trust to provide helpful feedback on how to improve your communication skills.

Seth Wong’s place of work is heavily cluttered, with shelves loaded with moldy bagels, stale cake and fermenting carrots. There’s a not-so-faint smell of urine in the air.

But if all goes according to plan for Wong and his new business partner, JJ Slatkin, their new office soon will have something else in abundance: marijuana.

The two Jewish 30-somethings are launching a new company that will offer contaminant testing and potency analysis for cannabis, which Colorado legalized in 2014.

A British company that makes medicines from cannabis is aiming to raise almost $180m on Nasdaq to push forward a new treatment for childhood epilepsy.

The share issue would bring the total raised by GW Pharmaceuticals in New York over the past two years to nearly $450m. During that time, its market capitalisation in London, where it has a dual listing, has grown from less than £100m to almost £1.5bn.

GW has special permission from the UK Home Office to grow cannabis at an undisclosed location in England for use in drugs that harness the therapeutic benefits of marijuana without producing the “high” associated with smoking the plant.

Is Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper starting to come around on the issue of legal marijuana? After a quick stroll through our archives and a viewing of a recent Fox Business interview with the Democrat (above) where he says of marijuana, “it’s not as vexing as we thought it was going to be,” it certainly seems like it.

Canada’s minister of public safety has weighed in on Vancouver’s plan to regulate the over-the-counter sale of medicinal marijuana

“We are deeply concerned about upcoming council discussions on a proposal to ‘regulate’ illegal drug dispensaries,” it reads. “Storefront sales of marijuana legitimize and normalize the use of marijuana and can have only one effect: increasing marijuana use addiction,” it continues.An April 28 letter co-signed signed by Steven Blaney and Health Minister Rona Ambrose emphasizes the storefront sale of cannabis is illegal and warns Vancouver not to go ahead with a proposed legal framework for the industry.

The importance of branding to businesses, no matter their size, is now recognised as a critical component of business growth and sustainability. Ignore branding at your peril especially in a world that is digitally supercharged and where for many consumers, both B2B and B2C, their journey will begin online and may well be completed offline in your own business premises.

'People make mistakes,' says other pot shop owner with criminal record

With the City of Vancouver looking at new rules to regulate the booming retail marijuana business, one of the hurdles some pot shops will face is police background checks of their operators. 

CBC decided to do its own background checks and quickly found some local operators have had serious run-ins with the law, including instances not involving the marijuana business. In one case, two of the operators of the Sea to Sky Alternative Healing Society — well aware their police involvement could back to haunt them — have removed themselves as directors of the pot dispensary at least on paper. 

They say they welcome Vancouver's move toward regulation of the city's 80-plus pot dispensaries. 

A judge has ordered state regulators to allow a company previously headed by former congressman William Delahunt to move forward with plans to open medical marijuana dispensaries in Mashpee and Plymouth, ruling it was improperly denied licenses last year.

In a 22-page ruling Monday, a Suffolk Superior Court judge found that the Department of Public Health failed to follow its own regulations in June when it rejected a bid by Medical Marijuana of Massachusetts to open three dispensaries, after initially approving it.

The denial came five months after the company scored the highest among 100 applicants and was among 20 selected to move onto the inspection phase. It also paid a $50,000 registration fee for each of its three proposed dispensaries.