Members of the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club are banding together in protest as a result of club’s Thursday raid — and subsequent shut-down — by B.C.’s Community Safety Unit.

The non-profit compassion club, which was founded nearly 25 years ago, has operated an unlicensed dispensary in Victoria for the past 18 years to provide affordable medical cannabis to patients in need.

Buyers Club president and founder, Ted Smith says that authorities seized most of the product in the store and ordered it to be shut down. Although many were surprised by the search and seizure, Smith told CBC’s All Points West that he was not.

P.E.I. cannabis producer FIGR is expanding its facility, located in Charlottetown — a move that will allow it to increase its production by 20 times. 

The company received approval from Health Canada last week for a licence amendment to allow the facility to operate an additional 210,000 square feet. 

About 46,000 square feet of the added space will be dedicated to processing, and 164,000 square feet will be dedicated to growing marijuana.

Currently, FIGR produces 1,200 and 1,400 kilograms of marijuana per year. The expansion will allow it to produce 28,000 kilograms per year said Alex Smith, the chief financial officer and vice-president of operations for FIGR on P.E.I.

Smith said additional space means more workers.

One year ago, it looked as if the cannabis industry would not be stopped. Canada had just become the first industrialized country in the modern era to legalize recreational marijuana, derivative products were expected to be launched by no later than October 2019, and a number of states in the U.S. were newly legalizing marijuana in some capacity.

Only a year ago, we saw the majority of pot stocks in the industry rise alongside the whole of the market. It seems as though the most recent volatility has all but shifted that notion. The current state of pot stocks seems to remain highly volatile, but it does look like the industry is on its way to maturing. Currently, pot stocks are still very much in their infancy. This means that the rampant price swings are quite common amongst the whole of the market.

On the tail-end of what turned out to be an extremely risky year for cannabis companies, one must wonder what 2020 has in store for a quasi-legal industry that is contending with a vaping crisis, contentious politics at all levels of government and ongoing financial concerns.

Rocco Petrilli, chief operating officer and board chair of the National Cannabis Risk Management Association, a Pittsburgh, Pa.-based nonprofit, says the top risk worries for the group’s 2,000-plus members may not be what you’d expect

Slip-and-falls at a growing number of marijuana dispensaries? Finding affordable product liability insurance? An unusually cold winter ruining crops? Adequate quality control?

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.

“It’s like a concept of rural Alberta, raising a barn,” said Grasslands Taber Cooperative CEO Lindsay Blackett, a former Alberta PC government cabinet minister.

“It’ll operate like a cooperative — people can do it without it costing an arm and a leg, they can get their feedstock and they don’t have to leave the grounds.”

The expectation has long been that marijuana would be among the fastest-growing industries in the world over the next decade. We've already witnessed global cannabis sales more than triple over the past four years, and know that tens of billions of dollars in sales are undertaken annually in the black market. The demand is there -- it's simply a matter of continuing to legalize in new markets, and coercing consumers to purchase via legal channels.

It goes without saying that you want to get as many new customers into your dispensary as possible. But with the cannabis retail space becoming more and more competitive every day, you can't just expect a flood of new customers to rush in the second you open your doors. You need the right marketing strategy to break through the clutter, grab your ideal customers' attention, and drive new business for your dispensary. 

Mistakes were made.

Canadian provinces went their own way when establishing a legal framework for cannabis and some have found considerably more success than others.

The Cannalysts, an independent analysis firm, released data this week showing that if Ontario had followed Alberta’s model, the province would have stimulated an extra $325 million in economic activity. On a yearly basis, the analysis notes, the province is missing out on around $488 million more, in addition to $75 million in taxes.