Ontario's online marijuana retailer wants to get pot into the hands of its customers more quickly, so it's looking for a courier company to offer same-day delivery. 

The Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp. (OCRC) has posted a tender call for same-day delivery that would launch around the beginning of March, initially focused on the Greater Toronto Area. 

"As OCRC's marketplace evolves, the ability for the organization to provide a variety of delivery options to meet customers' expectations is imperative to the growth of its e-commerce business," says the tender call posted online. "Accordingly, the OCRC is looking to add expedited / same-day home delivery service."

Recreational marijuana has been in legal in Canada since October 2018, but municipalities across the country are still unclear about their authority over consumption of the drug. There are a lot of legal grey areas and uncertainties as to how much control individual municipalities have.

Markham was one of the first cities in the Greater Toronto Area to opt out of having cannabis retail stores and also restricted consumption of the drug to private property. The city is now looking into how far it can go to restrict marijuana consumption.

Canada's persistent shortage of legal cannabis could drag on for years. The impending legalization of edible pot will only divert more product away from empty store shelves across the country. One industry insider said he now expects that shortage to endure until 2022.

"If it was just the current product set, I'd say a year to 18 months," said Chuck Rifici, CEO of the Toronto-based cannabis company Auxly.

"But because we have edibles and a bunch of new product types coming in October, I think it'll be the better part of three years before we have true equilibrium and oversupply in the space."

Canadians bought $54-million (US$41 million) of marijuana from stores in the first full month after sales were legalized, some of the clearest evidence yet of the market’s potential.

Statistics Canada’s figure for November released Wednesday follows an earlier estimate that sales were $43 million in the first two weeks following legalization on Oct. 17. The Ottawa-based agency added cannabis to standard monthly reports on retail sales as part of wider effort to update the nation’s economic accounts.

“Retail figures will vary as new stores continue to come on line and the marketplace continues to evolve,” the agency’s report said.

Quebec consumes a lot of weed, in news that isn't surprising to most Quebecers. Jean-François Bergeron, president of the Société Québécoise Du Cannabis, reports that the SQDC has made over $40 billion in profits, which amounts to about 35% of legal cannabis in Canada by weight. By comparison, Quebec represents a little over 20% of the Canadian population.

A new report by researchers at the University of British Columbia has found that up to one-third of pregnant women believe it is safe to ingest cannabis during pregnancy.

The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, pored over data from six U.S. studies and found that some women considered cannabis safe because their health-care provider hadn't communicated to them that it wasn't.

Lead author Hamideh Bayrampour, assistant professor in the UBC department of family practice, said the study is important for public health officials to understand perceptions of cannabis use, especially since the drug became legal in Canada.

"What we looked at was perception, not actual risk," Bayrampour said. 

On 17 October 2018 (‘Legalisation Day’) Canada became the world’s second – and largest – country to legalise recreational cannabis, 17 years after it first made medical cannabis legal. The historic move, which allows adults aged 18 and over to possess up to 30 grams of legal cannabis and grow up to four plants per residence, was greeted enthusiastically by many in the country but has nonetheless prompted concerns from some over patient access to cannabis-based medicines.

Health Europa asked James O’Hara, the president and CEO of non-profit organisation Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana (CFAMM), to tell us
more about the challenges surrounding medical cannabis and the implications of recreational legalisation.

Beleave Kannabis Corp. wants to grow more than just weed.

The Ontario marijuana company aims to build an empire of plant scientists, regulatory experts and security personnel in a nascent industry with exploding demand. But there‘s a shortage of experienced staffers in Canada, which became the first industrialized country to fully decriminalize pot in October, chief science officer Roger Ferreira said.

So Beleave, like dozens of other licensed producers, is pressing local universities for help.

“I‘m going to pillage the top of your class,” Ferreira said. “All your 4.0 GPAs, send them this way.”

Last summer, a few months before Canada legalized cannabis for recreational use, Canopy Growth Corp. bused a group of seniors from a nearby nursing home to its facility in Smiths Falls, Ont.

The idea, according to Canopy CEO Bruce Linton, was to let them observe how cannabis is grown and learn about the plant’s medical uses.

“They were really curious about the plant. They wanted to know what we were doing over here, what weed was all about, and how it could maybe help them through their ailments,” Linton said.

Marijuana producer WeedMD (CVE:WMD) (OTCMKTS:WDDMF) is 'well-positioned' heading into 2019 to capture market share in Canada as well as internationally, wrote analysts at Haywood Securities at the tail-end of last year.

More recently, another broker, Eight Capital, said the firm was keeping up with changes as the marijuana industry evolves. Both brokers rated its shares a Buy.

WeedMD produces cannabis and cannabis oil for both the medical and adult-use markets and operates two growing facilities.

Products include medical marijuana, including dried marijuana, cannabis oil, cannabis resin, marijuana plants, and marijuana seeds in Canada.