Ottawa Police Services released their overnight  R.I.D.E. Program results from the Ottawa region Saturday evening into Sunday morning.

They report that officers from the OPS stopped 375 vehicles for assessment of drivers impaired by alcohol and/or drugs.

During this R.I.D.E. program:

• One Provincial Offence Notice given for open liquor under the Liquor Licence Act (LLA)
• One Provincial Offence Notice given for unlicensed driver under the Highway Traffic Act (HTA)
• One warning given for having cannabis within reach of the driver under the Cannabis Act
• Four warnings given for burnt out headlights

People with chronic pain who use cannabis daily are far less likely to use illicit opioids, including fentanyl, a University of B.C. study shows.

The findings, based on self-reports over three years by 1,152 people about their drug use and pain, suggest cannabis might serve as a proxy for illicit opioids. The researchers did the study among marginalized residents of the Downtown Eastside, some of them injection drug users, to see if cannabis might be a potential alternative for opioids in a neighbourhood that’s been hit hard by the overdose epidemic.

The findings were reported in the publication PLOS Medicine.

Officials at London City Hall said they expect a spike in new pot shops after Ontario moved to scrap its cannabis retail lottery system in favour of an open market. 

The province made the announcement Thursday, saying the new rules would come into effect in January of 2020, promising that the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario would likely issue dozens of new retail licenses across Ontario this spring.

It's a stark contrast to the first year of legal cannabis in Ontario, where the availability of private retail stores in cities province-wide was hamstrung by low supplies of cannabis coupled with a limited number of available licenses. 

A medical marijuana user was turned away from an Ottawa Loblaw store, after a cashier refused to sell her beer, because the cashier said the customer smelled like cannabis.

Christie Southward uses marijuana for back pain and anxiety, but she had not been using when she went shopping at the McArthur Avenue Loblaw this week.

“At first I thought he was joking and he was very serious”, Southward told CTV Ottawa.

 “I was getting my groceries, and when it came to my alcohol, the cashier stopped and said he will not sell it to me because I smelled like pot”, she said.

Southward says she had not used marijuana that day, and believes the cashier smelled it on her jacket.

The provincial government says that it is scrapping the lottery system for cannabis shop permits and will begin issuing dozens of new retail permits in the spring as part of efforts to open up the weed market.

In its recent fiscal update, the province said that it would move to do away with the lottery system, which has faced criticism.

On Thursday, the province unveiled a timeline for issuing new retail cannabis permits, saying that applications for prospective owners will open on Jan. 6, with the first new licenses to be distributed in April.

Speaking with CP24 Thursday evening, Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey said the government wanted to go to an open market model from the start, but needed time to manage the changes and ensure adequate supply.  

Residents in Ontario lived further from a cannabis retail store than their counterparts in other provinces, newly released federal figures suggest.

The population-weighted average distance between Canadians and the nearest legal pot shop was 34 kilometres in July, down from 66 km four months earlier, said a report published Wednesday by Statistics Canada.

With just 24 cannabis shops open across the province in July, Ontarians were living, on average, 43 km from the nearest pot store. Only residents of the territories lived farther away, on average.

P.E.I. residents lived closest to pot stores, averaging just 12 km away, the report said. Alberta, with 176 retailers up and running by July, was second at 13 km.

Ontario is thinking about changing the lottery system being used to award cannabis retail licenses after the first year of legalization saw only 24 outlets open, with critics panning the lack of access for consumers

As reported by BNN Bloomberg on December 6, OCS (Ontario Cannabis Store) interim CEO Cal Bricker is confident in Ontario’s readiness for the Cannabis 2.0 launch. Although Cannabis 2.0 came into effect on October 17, Cannabis 2.0 edibles, beverages, and vape products will not enter Canada’s commercial arena until mid-December. Bricker expects the products to become available in Ontario starting on January 6, 2020. He claims that the three-week gap in the launch of products in Ontario will help licensed producers better match demand. He doesn’t anticipate any supply-side issues with the Cannabis 2.0 launch in the province.

Opening a hemp-based business for two moms in Tecumseh, Ont. has involved more than a year of red tape and roadblocks, largely because of the connection to cannabis.

Finding a bank, insurance and a landlord wasn't easy, according to Melissa Boow and Tiffany Rizok, and nearly forced them to give up trying. The owners constantly had to explain that both hemp and marijuana are cultivated from the cannabis sativa plant family, but that hemp contains virtually none of the elements of the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compound found in marijuana that makes people high.

"Everybody's scared and not realizing that there's a difference," said Boow. "For every step you take forward, you take two steps back fighting. It's not fair. It shouldn't be like this."

Despite years of stagnation, Canadian cannabis research is finally kicking into high gear.

The University of Alberta announced a partnership on Tuesday with Atlas Biotechnologies. The entities will conduct research relating to medical cannabis and its application in the treatment of a number of neurological illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and multiple sclerosis (MS).