Ottawa must withdraw its plan to charge tax on medicinal marijuana or risk having an adverse effect on patients, a group of more than 50 doctors warned Monday as the federal government hashed out a pot-tax revenue-sharing agreement with the provinces and territories.

The doctors, who describe themselves as a group of physicians who routinely prescribe marijuana to their patients, say applying a sales or excise tax to medicinal pot would impose a financial barrier for those who use the drug to manage their symptoms, compared to patients who take other medication.

[continues 199 words]

OTTAWA - Manitoba will push the federal government to transfer all of the sin taxes collected from recreational marijuana into provincial coffers, the Free Press has learned.

"This is a federal policy, with a federal timeline, with provincial obligations and responsibilities," provincial Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said.

On Sunday evening, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau hosted his colleagues from the provinces and territories for a working dinner before a lengthy meeting today examining everything from pension reform to equalization payments.

It's the looming July 2018 deadline

[continues 574 words]

Fighting back tears, Olympia Lynn Trypis stood in the rotunda of city hall and begged for better services for drug users, to save her life and the lives of her friends.

"In the last two years I've lost three of my really close friends and I am tired of having to go to funerals and not celebrating more birthdays. These people were beautiful souls," said Trypis, 22, speaking to a crowd who had marched to city hall in memory of people lost to drug overdoses, or contaminated drugs.

[continues 325 words]

It'll be months before London finds out if it gets the go-ahead and funding for supervised drug injection sites, but it appears key players already are walking in unison to support the sites, but restrict where they can locate.

The area's medical officer of health, a key city planner and an advocate for the downtrodden all express some confidence there will be suitable sites sufficiently far from schools and other places frequented by children.

"I completely understand why the city and stakeholders would want to limit where it goes," said Chris Mackie, the head of public health in London and Middlesex County. "I definitely think it will be possible to find one or two locations that will work."

[continues 602 words]

Ontario adolescents are drinking, smoking and using cannabis and other recreational drugs at the lowest rates since the late 1970s, suggests a biennial survey of Grade 7 to 12 students by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

But the 2017 survey released Thursday turned up a disturbing finding: almost one per cent of respondents in Grades 9 to 12 reported having taken illicit fentanyl in the previous year, raising a red flag given the opioid's involvement in hundreds of overdose deaths across the country.

[continues 366 words]

Re: PM says sorry for decades of LGBTQ2 bigotry - Nov. 29

I'm convinced that there is now sufficient precedence set by the apologies and compensations to the LGBTQ2 communities and the First Nations communities that will allow a heartfelt apology and due compensation to the marijuana dealers and users community. Indeed, the dealers of marijuana deserve a greater consideration by the Canadian government in view of the fact that it intends to take over the control and distribution of marijuana throughout the Dominion thus depriving the said dealers of their livelihood.

On a note of self-interest, I must state that I, as a good and true capitalist, have profited as a dealer in marijuana on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Joseph Murphy

Kitchener

[end]

TORONTO-Communities across Ontario cannot opt out of hosting a government-run pot shop if they are selected for a site, the provincial government said Friday after at least one town expressed resistance to having a cannabis retail location.

If a community is selected to host one of the marijuana shops, it could delay hosting the store but cannot completely opt out of having it, said Ontario's Ministry of Finance.

"As we roll out the next phase of stores, we will continue to engage with municipalities on an ongoing basis including with those municipalities who may not be ready for a store opening in July 2018," said Jessica Martin, spokesperson for Finance Minister Charles Sousa.

[continues 347 words]

LCBO advises city that Peterborough will have one of the first 40 marijuana stores to open in Ontario

Peterborough will have a marijuana store by next summer, says the city CAO.

Allan Seabrooke said the store will sell marijuana for recreational use. He said it will be open by July - the same month weed is going to be legalized in Canada.

In an email to The Examiner, Seabrooke wrote that the store will be operated by a subsidiary of the LCBO and will sell only cannabis - not alcohol.

[continues 309 words]

Smoke-free means smoke-free at Sault Area Hospital - whether that applies to tobacco fixes or toking up.

Sault Area Hospital currently has a no-cigarette policy that encompasses its entire property, which will apply once recreational pot becomes legal in Canada next summer.

"We have a no-smoking policy, so that would apply to smoking marijuana on our property," SAH president and CEO Ron Gagnon told The Sault Star.

SAH's policy includes all buildings, parking lots, the Hub Trail running along the eastern edge of the hospital grounds, roads encircling the hospital leading to and from both Great Northern Road and Third Line and wooded and grass areas to the south and west of the emergency department and helipad.

[continues 361 words]

Province backtracks on stand that municipalities cannot opt out of cannabis stores

The Ontario government appeared to backtrack late Friday on an earlier statement that municipalities would be unable to opt out of hosting marijuana stores, raising more questions about the province's readiness for the expected pot legalization next summer.

The issue came up earlier this week after a city of Richmond Hill committee unanimously endorsed a statement saying it was not willing to host one of the retail stores.

[continues 486 words]

Just how horrific Ontario's opioid crisis has become came into sharp focus this past week with the release of timely new data from Ontario's chief coroner, Dirk Huyer.

Sadly, from May to July of this year, there were 336 opioid-related deaths in the province, up from 201 in that same period last year. That represents a staggering 68-per-cent increase.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins put a human face on the startling statistics when he reminded Ontarians that "each and every one of these numbers is a person: someone who was loved by their family, someone who won't be coming home this holiday season."

[continues 589 words]

Community Drug Strategy steps up efforts to combat opioid crisis

Some 52 people were admitted to hospitals in the Sudbury area in the past six months due to drug overdose, official say.

Members of Sudbury's Community Drug Strategy also said Friday they have had preliminary discussions about the need for an overdose prevention site in the city.

They made the comments in response to the Ontario government's decision Thursday to expand the provincial opioid response, which they called good news.

[continues 756 words]

Currently, some of the city's drug users have set up supervised sites in their own homes

Contamination of the street drug supply with substances such as fentanyl has forced some of the city's drug users to set up their own supervised consumption sites in their homes.

The agency that works most closely with drug users says the home sites indicate that Kingston needs a formal, government-sanctioned consumption site.

"We definitely know there is a need because we are aware of people using their homes right now as safer places to use," said Dr. Meredith MacKenzie, a physician for Kingston Community Health Centres' Street Health Centre who described a home site as a "not perfectly safe, but safer, environment to use in."

[continues 444 words]

Fed-up landlord cracks down

Ontario's threat of huge fines or jail time for landlords who rent to illegal pot shops has spurred at least one in Ottawa to take quick action, in the latest chapter of Canada's move to legalize and regulate weed.

Police arrived at the popular Cannabis Culture dispensary on Bank Street on Thursday morning with a bailiff, who changed the locks and posted a notice on the door saying the lease was being terminated. Five people working inside were released without charge, according to staff who gathered outside.

[continues 1438 words]

Council does not want LCBO's legal dispensary to be located in town

"Thanks but no thanks."

That was the answer Monday night from local councillors to a suggestion Richmond Hill should be one of the first host towns for legal recreational marijuana sales.

The town of Richmond Hill received a letter Nov. 28 from the Ministry of Finance announcing a cannabis store may be coming to town in July 2018.

"We are not interested," Mayor Dave Barrow said at a committee of the whole meeting this week.

[continues 455 words]

Pot shop weeded out

Another one has gone up in smoke.

And just like with the other potshop closures, it appeared as though the void, at least in part, was immediately filled by street drug dealers.

"Actually, there are four or five guys," said one retailer in the Kensington Market area.

On Wednesday morning after the raid that shut down The Toronto Dispensary at 33 Kensington Ave., you could see street dealers lurking nearby as people who hadn't yet heard the news were looking for their buzz.

[continues 290 words]

The Ontario government says it will delay opening branches of its new cannabis retail chain in municipalities that object to having them.

A handful of mayors in the Greater Toronto Area have said they do not want a marijuana store in their areas, even though they recognize they are powerless to stop Queen's Park.

Among them is Dave Barrow of Richmond Hill. His town council has received a deluge of complaints from residents about the province's plan to open one of the provincially controlled stores in the suburb north of Toronto, and is expected to vote No to it on Monday.

[continues 535 words]

Cambridge resident Cindy Watson wants the Region of Waterloo to put the brakes on the proposed use of safe injection sites.

During the region's community services committee Tuesday, Watson spoke in front of councillors asking them to think hard before moving forward with safe injection sites.

"You will be making one of the most important decisions of your career," said Watson. "Don't be pressured into using a broken model … the model itself is broken."

Watson said harm reduction is needed, but needs to be balanced with public safety and livelihood of downtown cores.

[continues 514 words]

While regional councillors have heard bits and pieces about the opioid response in the region, they heard it from the horse's mouth on Tuesday.

Members from various regional and community groups spoke before council in a public meeting to encourage a broad understanding of the complex issue.

The public meeting was broken down into core areas, such as policing, mental health services and public health services.

Bruce Lauckner, CEO of the Waterloo-Wellington Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), said opioids have become similar to cancer, where the general population is impacted by one or two degrees of separation at most.

[continues 1113 words]

Poetic Riposte

OTTAWA - With the Liberal cannabis legalization bill now being debated in the Senate, the Conservative Party's health critic used poetry Friday to ask for sober second thought.

Marilyn Gladu implored the upper chamber to "keep our great country safe from all the weed" Friday after the Senate's first debate on Bill C-45, a federal framework for legal marijuana, got underway Thursday afternoon.

The House of Commons passed the federal bill Monday. It must get through an unpredictable Senate before it can become law. So far, eight provinces and territories have unveiled plans ahead of the government's July 1, 2018, deadline for Canadians to access legal pot.

[continues 429 words]