Christmas is coming, but don’t expect any flashy giveaways from your favourite cannabis brand. The laws behind promoting cannabis in Canada are far too Grinch-like for that.

“Much like alcohol, we don’t want to encourage people to buy the product. So, the advertising is supposed to be really neutral,” Daniel Walker, a lawyer with Bobila Walker Law, told The GrowthOp.

An update of the Cannabis Act in October added clarification to the rules around promotional items. But it still can be confusing.

There was a time just a few short months ago that buying into the world of legal cannabis seemed like a sure thing.

But that optimism has gone up in smoke.

A major pot stock sell off continued on markets Monday, partially because consumers are less than enthused about legally available cannabis.  

A 30-acre lot in Ridgeway, Ont. is set to become a brand-new cannabis farm, but not if locals can help it.

The property was sold earlier this year for about $600,000 after a few months on the market, with the intention of turning it into a production and cultivation facility for Greenherb Farms.

But as the land is prepared for farming — tall fencing installed and trees and brush cleared — outraged neighbours have formed a group. The group is circulating a petition to prevent the farm from taking root, citing concerns about odour, environmental destruction, traffic and historical value.

Insurance is a steep cost for the new retail cannabis industry, says a central Alberta business owner.

Matt Panelli, co-owner of Lacombe’s Merry Guana, said it was difficult to get an insurance quote when he first started his business last fall.

He and his partner were only able to get quotes from two companies.

“The first quote we got was five times the amount a liquor store would pay for similar coverage, and the other one was two-and-a-half times,” said Panelli.

“So we have to pay two-and-a-half times what a liquor store pays, even though all of our product has to be stored in a vault that we had to build – it’s essentially like a bank vault.”

A “limited quantity” of unlicensed cannabis was grown inside a Niagara, Ont. facility that Quebec-based Hexo Corp. acquired from Newstrike Brands Inc. earlier this year, with a “tiny” amount of that pot entering the market, the company’s chief executive said.

In a release late Friday, Hexo said once the company discovered that unlicensed cannabis was being cultivated in “Block B,” a room inside a building formerly owned and operated by Newstrike Brands, it immediately “ceased cultivation and production activities” in the room and notified federal regulators. Hexo acquired Newstrike Brands in March for $263 million.

If there’s a lesson that Canada’s pot industry can take from a devastating week that saw the country’s largest producers post massive losses amid waves of product returns and piles of excess inventory, it might be this: understand your market first, sell your product later.

And with cannabis 2.0 looming, there isn’t much time to learn it.

“Any company that’s looking to make a product for cannabis 2.0 should wait six months to see what comes out in the market,” said Narbe Alexandrian, president and CEO of Canopy Rivers, the venture capital arm of Canopy Growth Corp.

Let me settle one thing right off the bat: There were no winners among the biggest Canadian cannabis producers during the frenzy of earnings results announced last week. Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB), Canopy Growth (NYSE:CGC), Cronos Group (

You might be ready to abandon hope for Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB). That's understandable after the company's ugly fiscal 2020 first-quarter results.

Grasslands Taber Cooperative CEO Lindsay Blackett, a former Alberta PC government cabinet minister will start the country's first cannabis cooperative ready to take root in Taber on Thursday, November 14, 2019. Darren Makowichuk/Postmedia

As grain elevators tumble to time, a terminal accepting cannabis shipments could soon be a replacement on the southern Alberta prairie.

That’s the goal of a group behind what they say is the country’s first craft cannabis collective, one that’ll host growers, processors, researchers and other links in the pot production and supply chain on 25 hectares of land in Taber.

Aurora Cannabis Inc. is halting construction of two production facilities to save over $190 million as part of a plan to strengthen its balance sheet.

The Edmonton-based cannabis producer says it will immediately cease construction of its Aurora Nordic 2 facility in Denmark to save about $80 million over the next year.

The company will also indefinitely defer completion of construction and commissioning at its Aurora Sun facility in Medicine Hat, Alberta to conserve $110 million.

Once completed, the Aurora Sun facility will be the size of 21 football fields and 50 per cent larger than its "Aurora Sky" operation at Edmonton International Airport.