Ella Turkington, 5, has intractable epilepsy and autism. Her parents Kim and Rob Turkington administer cannabidiol (CBD) oil in conjunction with her pharmaceuticals — as more families are experimenting with pediatric cannabis — to treat her epilepsy. Photograph by: Tiffany Crawford , Vancouver Sun

Mention Taylor Swift and five-year-old Ella’s eyes light up like the Christmas tree in the corner of her Surrey living room.

The tree scrapes the ceiling, and Ella is eager to play with the decorations, but her parents have set up a barricade so she can’t reach the branches.

That’s because the young girl has severe epilepsy and autism, and, although she is nearly six, the cognitive ability of a toddler.

Re: Legal weed would lead to more use, poll says, Dec. 22

Re: A threat to Ottawa’s pot plan, Opinion Dec. 16

Legal weed would lead to more use, poll says, Dec. 22

About the only good thing about the legalization of marijuana will be a possible reduction in the criminal element attached to its sale. Unfortunately, as in the case of tobacco, there will still be those who sell/buy it illegally to avoid paying government-levied taxes.

While it probably makes sense to sell it through the LCBO if/when it’s legalized, I fear this will somehow endow it with a legitimacy it doesn’t deserve, so marketing of it must be strictly prohibited.

By 1971, marijuana’s scent hung over most of Canada. Some 1.5 million folks had taken at least one drag on a joint. Hundreds of thousands were regularly firing up, grooving to Three Dog Night and learning from the leaked Pentagon Papers that the U.S. administration had lied about the Vietnam War.

Convictions for simple pot possession exploded: from 431 in 1967 to 5,399 in 1970 and 8,389 in 1971. More than half were against otherwise law-abiding baby boomers under 21 who would now carry criminal records along with their university degrees.

Canada's 26 licensed medical marijuana growers are in for a busy 2016 if predictions in a recent report by Investor Intel prove accurate.

Dr. Luc Duchesne - in a column spotlighting Calgary grower Aurora Cannabis Inc.'s approval from Health Canada to sell to licensed medical patients - predicts a "significant market explosion" in the field of legal marijuana.

Throughout the past year we have no doubt seen groundbreaking strides in the cannabis universe.

Our continued efforts to dismantle the failed experiment of prohibition are full of excitement but also frustration.

But even though we still have a lot of work to do, it is simply awe-inspiring to look back on this year in cannabis.

To celebrate and share our gratitude, here is a month-by-month snapshot of cannabis in 2015. The resulting story arc is a powerful indication that momentum is stronger than ever – cannabis legalization will not be stopped!

There is little doubt in my mind that marijuana — cannabis, weed, pot, ganja, skunk, bud, herb, sticky icky, mota (in Mexico), le shit (in France), whatever you want to call it — is on the road to legalization. There are a lot of reasons for that. One of them is the changes taking place around the world.

While Rose Miranda waits for her April court date to face potential charges of possession for the purpose of trafficking, the 65-year-old retired education assistant can't take cannabis for her arthritis.

Mounties have also banned her from visiting or contacting anyone at Phoenix Pain Management Society, the medical marijuana dispensary where she was volunteering when she was arrested in Nanaimo, B.C.

"I love Baby Trudeau, but he says, 'We're going to fix this.' When? Meanwhile, I have clients who don't have their medication," Miranda said.

"I take care of people who are housebound, people in wheelchairs and people who are poor. They need their medication and right now they can't access it."

Marcus Richardson is, in the eyes of the law, a criminal.

Never mind that a judge ruled the six kilograms of cannabis police found in his car was for severely ill patients at a medical marijuana dispensary.

Or that the same judge imposed only a minimum sentence because anything more would fail to maintain “a just, peaceful and safe society.”

He’s a criminal – and so are scores of other Canadians who face barriers to travel and work because they were caught with a drug that the government now intends to legalize.

“My charge wasn’t like, ‘He was practising civil disobedience at a place that was helping sick and dying people improve the quality of their last days on earth,“’ Richardson said.

Marijuana represents a potential "revenue opportunity" for the Saskatchewan government, but Premier Brad Wall says he's not thinking about selling it in provincial liquor stores.

In an interview, Wall told CBC News that because the federal Liberals campaigned on legalizing marijuana, he's expecting to see that happen at some point.

However, the government hasn't given much thought to selling the drug in its 75 provincially-owned stores.

"We're not looking for an expanded role," Wall said. "We're actually looking in another direction."

That was a reference to the Wall government's proposal to privatize 40 of its stores if the Saskatchewan Party gets re-elected in the spring.

'Revenue opportunity' for governments, Wall notes