The designs for 12 Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC) cannabis shops were released on Monday by the organization’s President and CEO, Bret Mitchell.

Eleven of the cannabis shops will be located within NSLC locations, which will undergo $500,000 renovations to accommodate the shops-within-a-shop. One vacant store in Halifax will reopen as the sole cannabis-only store in the province.

Based on the renderings, the shops are well-lit with white walls featuring a few punches of bright colours. There will be a wall of weed boxes behind the cash registers that will display the products.

“We have what I consider a modern, bright, really merchandise-intense full-service environment which we are going to roll in July,” said Mitchell.

Concerns about access voiced Saturday at 12th Global Marijuana Rally in Halifax.

A rally and march held in Halifax Saturday highlighted lingering questions for medical cannabis users once marijuana is legalized in Canada July 1, 2018.

Dozens of people attended the 12th Global Marijuana Rally and March at Victoria Park. It was organized by the Maritimers Unite for Medical Marijuana Society, a registered not-for-profit organization that advocates for patients who use cannabis for medication.

Mind-numbing, mind-blowing or mind-bending, take your pick, but news that 450 different cannabis products will be available when it’s legal elicits or promises all three responses, maybe more.

And that’s only for starters. So-called edibles and drinkables won’t even be on the market at first but once they are, in about a year, the mind boggles with the ingestion potential.

Cannabis is bigger business than many would have guessed, and when recreational use becomes legal sometime this year, provincial governments take over the lion’s share.

Every day, as regular as clockwork but with increasing regularity, they come: the kids in their late teens who feel about weed the same way I do about a glass of Fat Bastard; the baby boomers who stopped sparking up because they “grew up:” the octogenarians luxuriating in having the social licence to indulge once again.

The other day Jack Fanning, Halifax Seed Co.’s indoor horticultural specialist and resident cannabis expert, had a call from a woman who introduced herself as a member of the St. Margarets Bay Gardening Association, wondering if he would come out to the bay some day and do a little seminar for the membership, which is mostly over 80 and entirely female.

Canadians consumed more than 20 grams of marijuana per person last year, spending C$5.6 billion on the product, according to 

With legal pot looming, officials are working on training tools for Canada's cops.

Pop quiz: what does 30 grams of marijuana look like?

It's not an abstract question. Under the federal government's proposed cannabis legalization plan, 30 grams of dried marijuana is the maximum a person can legally possess in a public place. Carry any more and you could be subject to fines, jail time, or both.

Policing quantities is a big shift for police officers, who are used to viewing any amount of pot as a potential red flag, said Sandy Sweet of the Canadian Police Knowledge Network, an agency that provides online training courses for police officers.

Changes to federal laws governing recreational cannabis use this summer has employers seeking to clear the haze on some burning questions when it comes to worker safety and company liability at the job site.

Questions of note include: As with alcohol consumption, can the same workplace restrictions apply to cannabis use? And how do employers handle workers who are heavy users of cannabis and may have a residual level of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, in their bloodstream for days or a week after smoking a joint?

Medical cannabis advocates suffered a major setback April 12, when the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that an injured man’s legally prescribed medical cannabis must be covered by his union’s trust fund.

The court decided that the Canadian Elevator Industry Welfare Trust Fund’s refusal to cover the medication for Gordon Wayne Skinner was not due to discrimination, as the Nova Scotia Human Rights Board of Inquiry had found.

In a press release, Skinner described the decision as “devastating. My own union is doing everything [it] can to deny coverage of the only medication that works for me, while myself and my family are left to suffer,” he said.

With signs in hand, a half-dozen people marched down Charlotte Street on Friday to the sounds of cheers and honking car horns from onlookers showing their support.

They were marching as part of an an event called 4/20, an annual celebration of cannabis culture where participants attempt to bring a wider understanding of marijuana to the public.

Muggy weather didn’t stop passersby from joining the group on its trek down to the Wentworth Park bandshell, and by the end of the march 16 people stood together in solidarity.

The 4/20 celebration is important for many users of marijuana as a way to show support for legalization for recreational use, but Sydney’s first Medical Marijuana March was focused on a different idea, says march organizer Cory Mombourquette.

With a little more than a year to go before the federal deadline to legalize marijuana, the incoming provincial government will have to work quickly to implement new provincial pot laws. 

None of the three party leaders has a definite plan on how they want to regulate the drug, but say they will be working on the issue in time for July 1, 2018.

Legalization was a key campaign promise by the Trudeau Liberals in 2015, but Ottawa has given discretion to the provinces over issues such the price of the drug, and how it is distributed and sold. The federal minimum age to buy marijuana will be 18 but provinces are permitted to set an older age limit. 

McNeil: 'Uniform approach' needed