The plan to open a new medical marijuana dispensary at a downtown Vancouver condo complex has riled up some residents of 1675 Hornby Street. 

Maxine Clough, one of the residents at the condo near Hornby St. and Beach Ave., said that while she and her neighbours have no problem with medical marijuana, their building is simply the wrong location. She has started a petition to stop the store from opening and has collected roughly 140 signatures so far.

"We have the Montessori school just down the bike path. We have another pre-school on Burrard Street, where the children go by here all the time," she says. "We just don't think this is the right atmosphere [for a medical marijuana store]."

Crop King Seeds is the first branded marijuana company in Canada that sells seeds for cannabis genetics at over 140 stores across Canada. 

With their head office located in the Penthouse of Gastown’s Dominion building, Crop King Seeds has over 20 strains of marijuana and 13 employees gearing up to become the next “Molson Canadian” of North America’s fastest growing industry.

Kyle (last name withheld), the owner of Crop King Seeds has been asked over and over during his time in the industry; why the marijuana business? “Why not? I could have gone into the trendy Micro Brewery industry but then I realized that alcohol is far more harmful and destructive than marijuana. I wanted to be a pioneer, a game changer to bring a positive change to our country and communities.”

There has been one constant since the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the prohibition against possession of marijuana for medical reasons in 2000: the subsequent rules imposed by the federal government have been subject to repeated court challenges. Litigation around medical marijuana has heated up ever since the government changed the rules aound who can produce and supply it. Photo: Gordon Swanson/Shutterstock The courts have found the regulations that govern medical marijuana to be invalid on more than one occasion and there are two current proceedings before the courts that could again require the federal government to go back to the drawing board.

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They’re presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.

OTTAWA – Hundreds of medical marijuana users in British Columbia have been told the pot they thought could help them might harm them because it’s contaminated with bacteria.

Health Canada says Tilray, a Nanaimo supplier, is telling clients to stop using its Sativa House Blend, Hybrid House Blend and Indica House Blend.

The pot was contaminated with enterobacter, which is not associated with an acute health risk, said Joshua Eades, Tilray’s chief science officer.

He said the company doesn’t know where the bacteria originated.

“We are undergoing a top-to-bottom, rigorous review of our sanitation practices and procedures,” he said. “And we’ll be doing a root-cause analysis to understand what caused these results.”

KAMLOOPS - A provincial court judge has denied a Kamloops man's application to be reunited with 10 medical marijuana plants that were seized by RCMP last summer.

Judge Roy Dickey says he sympathizes with Henry Rhode's plight, but he was breaking the law by having expired licenses and not growing at an approved site.

Dickey criticizes what he calls a "bureaucratic bungle" created by the Conservative government and Health Canada when the country's medical marijuana rules were changed.

He says a new law requiring those with permits to grow medical pot to instead purchase from an approved supplier has left people like Rhode "out to dry."

The former head baker of the Victoria Cannabis Buyers’ Club heads to Ottawa today in hopes of overturning Canada’s medical marijuana laws and securing the right for patients to use cannabis oils, cookies, teas and lotions.

Owen Edward Smith will appear before the Supreme Court of Canada on Friday after victories at the B.C. Court of Appeal and B.C. Supreme Court.

It’s the first time Canada’s highest court has heard a medical marijuana case.

Smith was arrested at a Victoria apartment in 2009 and charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking THC after police found pot cookies and other cannabis-infused foodstuffs on the premises.

Whonnock residents fear their bucolic way of life will be ruined if plans for a large medical marijuana greenhouse are approved by Health Canada.

The conflict began about a year ago after a company purchased 15 acres of farmland in an area surrounded by smaller acreages. The property, which is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, was traditionally used for intensive agriculture, according to its new owner, Dan Sutton, managing director of Tantalus Labs. The company plans to continue that tradition, building a 40,000-square-foot greenhouse to grow marijuana.

But neighbours say the new crop is unlike any other farm use.

“We’re not against this industry, the problem is the location,” said Sylvie Jensen. “Industrial grow-ops don’t belong in a place like this.”

The RCMP had no data to back up their claims that medical marijuana grow operations under Canada’s old licensing system were inherently dangerous to producers and magnets for violent thieves and organized criminals, an expert told the Federal Court Thursday.

Everyone knows that marijuana is illegal. So why does Canada seem to be awash in pot? You can buy it openly in a surprising number of ways and places. The system the federal government set up to give people access to medical marijuana is broken. Could it be that something’s happening out there and no one told Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Mark Kelley exposes some real Pot Fiction.