Cannabis-related hospital emergency visits for children and youth increased five-fold in Ontario between 2003 and 2017, according to a new study led by the CHEO Research Institute.

To get traction in a legal pot industry that’s overwhelmingly white and male, Mississauga entrepreneur Omar Ali first had to go by a different name.

Omar Ali found out the hard way that if he wanted to succeed as a licensed Ontario pot producer and seller, he might have to go by a different name.

After several applications for permits, municipal approvals and financing for his pot production company fell on deaf ears, Ali, 39, started to feel as if a stigma attached to his name was holding him back. So he decided to switch strategies, and started adopting his wife’s more French-sounding surname: Monpetit.

People were more receptive to Michael Monpetit, he said.

Driver faces charge of operating a vehicle while impaired by drugs

A 60-year-old taxi driver has been charged with drug driving after some sharp-nosed, off-duty officers sniffed out the smell of weed coming from his parked vehicle at a Collision Reporting Centre.

The driver had reported a rear-end collision involving the cab, notes a statement this week from the Greater Sudbury Police Service.

One of the Toronto locations of a small group of cannabis stores has permanently closed, and it may be a sign more are facing the same fate as the city reaches a saturation point.

According to the latest stats, Toronto now has more than 200 cannabis stores. About a dozen have opened every month since the start of last year.

Whereas before cannabis was legalized pot stores were not a common part of the landscape, now you can barely walk a block in Toronto without running into a handful of them.

It's gotten so saturated, independently-owned weed shops are now actively trying to be acquired by the major chains. 

Others have started to close under-performing locations.

The Western Fair Association has partnered with CannabisWiki to organize a first-of-its-kind agricultural cannabis event in Southwestern Ontario.

Until the pandemic began, the annual Western Fair in London, Ont. had run uninterrupted since the Second World War.

Tilray stock financials are encouraging, especially if the loosening of cannabis restrictions materializes

Since the beginning of the year, the stock of Tilray Brands (NASDAQ:TLRY), a leading global cannabis producer, has lost some ground, down 3% to $6.80 per share. TLRY stock has performed better than the broader market on the period, due to renewed investor interest from the prospects of this leading cannabis actor and its poor stock performance last year.  

Job growth in the cannabis sector has averaged over 27% since 2017.

Cannabis retailer Fire & Flower Holdings Corp.‘s (TSX: FAF) (OTCQX: FFLWF) digital platform Hifyre Inc. is partnering with a cannabis-focused recruitment company to help it fill a number of technical roles. (Image source: Hifyre)

On Tuesday, The White Ash Group Inc., a Toronto-based recruitment firm with operations in New York, said the agreement will extend through April 2022 as part of Hifyre’s rapid-growth strategy.

White Ash Group previously worked with Fire & Flower in 2021 to fill director-level positions, and will now help hire mobile developers, product managers, development operations engineers and data analysts.

BRAMPTON, ON, Feb. 14, 2022 /CNW/ - CannabCo Pharmaceutical Corp. (CannabCo), a Canadian company located in Brampton, Ontario, is pleased to announce a change in the representative technology name from its former Purecann to PureScent™.