Local police are coming across less impaired drivers on county roadways.

Comparing 2017 to 2018, Strathcona County RCMP experience a six per cent decrease in impaired driving offences, from 822 to 751 files.

Impaired operational offences include drunk driving, drug-impaired, and breathalyzer refusals.

“People know the consequences and the risks and possibilities about not only harming themselves, and somebody else, but also the legal and financial consequences of getting caught for impaired driving, so it’s really about education and having people finding alternate ways to get home, whether that be taxis, Uber, or some picking them up,” local Const. Chantelle Kelly explained the decrease.

Ontario's first legal cannabis retail shops are set to open their doors next week, but some of the 25 licence holders are still wading through the lengthy approval process and might not be ready for business.

Ontario is the last province in the country to open brick-and-mortar cannabis stores since Canada legalized recreational marijuana on Oct. 17, 2018. Currently, pot can only be legally purchased at Ontario's government-run online store. 

In Toronto, only one of the five shops set to open in the city have been issued their retail store authorization from the province as of Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the The Hunny Pot, at 202 Queen St. W., confirmed to CBC Toronto that it will be open for business on April 1 at 9 a.m.

A recent study using data from more than 230,000 questionnaires by Canadian high school students in grades 9 to 12 found that almost 10 per cent reported having used the drug at least once per week in 2017-18, with a further 18 per cent saying they had used it at least once in the last year.

Both weekly and occasional use reached their lowest points in 2014-15 (9 percent and 15 percent respectively) and have since been rising steadily.

"The problem was developing while legalization was being discussed, but well before concrete steps to change the law were taken," said lead author Alex Zuckermann, a post-doctoral fellow with the Public Health Agency of Canada working in the School of Public Health and Health Systems.

Industry Overview of Hemp-based Foods Market

The global Hemp-based Foods market research report studies market overview defining; definition, types, applications latest trends to identify the revenues and the progress of the market over the forecast period. The report offers the preventive and premeditated management along with emphasizes the summary of the global Hemp-based Foods market along with classifications and market chain structures. It also highlights authorized statistics of the global Hemp-based Foods market.

“While it is difficult to assess how much of the change is demand versus supply driven,” wrote analyst Vivien Azer, in the note, “our view is that demand remains strong with an improving supply chain.”

Cowen surveyed online shops in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, New Brunswick and Newfoundland & Labrador.

With higher prices and relatively few locations, Ontario's first batch of licensed cannabis stores may have a hard time luring customers away from the province's thriving black market.

Industry experts are warning of those growing pains with just a week to go before Ontario's first brick-and-mortar pot shops open their doors to the public.

"Cannabis customers are like people who purchase any other good, if they think they can get a cheaper deal, more conveniently, they're going to go with the illegal seller," said Rod Elliott, the vice president of Global Public Affairs, which provides consulting services to companies in the cannabis industry.

The legal marijuana industry has come an exceptionally long way in a very short period. As recently as 2005, recreational cannabis was illegal everywhere, just a small handful of U.S. states were allowing medical marijuana to be prescribed by a physician, and a Gallup survey found that just one out of three Americans supported legalizing weed at the national level.

Provinces are waiting for the federal regulations on legal edibles to come into place no later than Oct. 17.

We spoke with Avery Bruenjes, the Retail Council of Canada’s policy analyst for government relations and regulatory affairs, who’s scheduled to address the Retail Cannabis Forum on Monday at the Toronto Congress Centre in Etobicoke, Ont.

Q. How do you define an edible?

A. Loosely, it’s a product that contains cannabis that is intended to be consumed as a food product or drink would be.

Q. Why did the government not deal with edibles last October when recreational weed became legal?

The man who founded Jelly Belly has released cannabis-infused jelly beans.

Last month, David Klein, founder of Jelly Belly, first announced the new product line.

The cannabidiol or CBD-infused candies will be available in 38 different flavors.

According to the company’s website, customers 18 years or older must send their own CBD along with a lab report to show their chemical is "compliant with laws in handling your product.".

The company will then tweak their original recipes to determine the correct amount of CBD in each bean.

Spectrum Confections states some vendors are already selling the beans for about US$2 each.

With 10 days left until Ontarians will be allowed to purchase cannabis at one of 25 retail stores in the province, many of the license holders are struggling to get their shops ready to open on time.

The winners of the cannabis retail license lottery in Ontario have had just over two months to get their stores ready by the April 1 deadline.

Felicia Snyder works with Tokyo Smoke, a cannabis company that has licensed its brand to one of the five lottery winners in Toronto. Crews are working around the clock converting an old HMV building near Yonge Street and Dundas Avenue into a two-story cannabis store.