An increasing number of mothers are using cannabis to help them parent. As they come out of the ‘green closet’, they’re hoping to shift the stigma. A couple years after California legalised cannabis for adult use in 2016, Danielle Simone Brand decided to try it. A journalist in the US Pacific Northwest, Brand, now 42, found cannabis left her feeling “better and more embodied, happier in my body and mind”. Looking at legal cannabis as a wellness tool, she quickly liked how using the substance herself bettered her ability to parent her two children, now 8 and 11. “Cannabis helps me in certain transitional moments,” she says. “I can more easily set aside my workday to-do list, along with whatever challenges and frustrations I’ve experienced that day, and get into the kind of headspace where I can patiently help with homework or make dinner with my daughter.” Brand, the author of Weed Mom: The Canna-Curious Woman’s Guide to Healthier Relaxation, Happier Parenting, and Chilling TF Out, says cannabis helped her slow down enough to linger with her kids at bedtime. Because she was so often in a hurry to get them to bed at a reasonable hour — and buy some rest for herself — Brand says she was missing out on time when her kids were keen to connect.
Cannabis & Drugs
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is being urged to decriminalize the possession and use of illicit drugs as a way to combat the opioid crisis that has resulted in thousands of deaths in Canada. Almost 70 organizations from across the country — including the HIV Legal Network, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and the National Association of Women and the Law — have written a letter to Trudeau asking that he make drug policy reform a priority for his newly re-elected Liberal government. They want drug possession to be immediately decriminalized and all criminal sanctions and penalties related to drug use to be eliminated. And they want federal funding to ensure “low-barrier access” to a safe supply of drugs. Almost 23,000 Canadians died from an opioid overdose between January 2016 and March 2021 and the groups say those deaths were fuelled by “a contaminated drug supply and the stigma associated with drug use” which is only reinforced by criminalizing drugs and drug users.
When midnight struck on Oct. 17, 2018, Canada became the first developed nation to allow the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, and since then the industry has had its share of ups and downs. While billions of dollars worth of legal pot has been sold across thousands of licensed stores, helping to stamp out roughly half of the illicit market, it’s also seen many cannabis companies cumulatively post billions of dollars in losses as market dynamics warped lofty expectations made in the early days of legalization. But change may be afoot as the Canadian government undertakes a lengthy 18-month-long review of the legislation that legalized cannabis, which many in the industry hope will address several shortcomings and stabilize some of the more tenuous parts of the sector, like lowering fees or amending packaging and potency requirements. “What’s at stake is that three years from now, we don’t all look back with a tragic collective sigh about the unrealized opportunity,” said George Smitherman, president of the Cannabis Council of Canada, the industry’s main lobby group. “The risk is that we’ll have run out of energy for the kind of continuous quality improvement that a brand new out-of-the-box law like this needs.”
Neither Ontario nor Alberta — far and away, the leaders for the number of cannabis stores in the country — have witnessed a significant rise in emergency visits from traffic-related injuries since weed got the green light three years ago. “Implementation of the Cannabis Act was not associated with evidence of significant post-legalization changes in traffic-injury emergency department (ED) visits in Ontario or Alberta among all drivers or youth drivers, in particular,” notes the new Canadian study in Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Published last week, researchers sought to get firm numbers afters some have expressed concerns about how recreational cannabis legalization could influence road-related injuries, particularly with respect to youth drivers. To get to firm numbers, investigators considered weekly drivers’ traffic injuries at all EDs in Ontario and Alberta from the start of April 2015 (three years before legalization) through the end of 2019. […] “There was no evidence of significant changes associated with cannabis legalization on post-legalization weekly counts of drivers’ traffic-injury ED visits,” researchers write.
The small Ontario city of Fergus, not farm from Guelph, became the latest community in the province to yield yet another multi-million-dollar weed grow-op. As part of a probe of criminal organizations that exploit the legal cannabis market, a joint team led by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) executed a search warrant on a commercial property in Fergus on Thursday. There, they found more than 4,300 cannabis plants, notes a video release of the bust. Beyond the plants, estimated to be worth $4.3 million, the OPP reports that police seized about $250,000 worth of processed cannabis and an unspecified, although characterized as large, amount of Canadian currency. The OPP received help from local roads and fire departments, and the Electrical Safety Authority. The find has resulted in two men being charged with cannabis and other drug-related offences. Wei Chen, 40, and Zhong Xiang Chen, 30, faces charges under the Cannabis Act, including possession for the purpose of selling, according to Global News.
Police are searching for suspects after shots were fired at a northwest cannabis store during a nighttime robbery. The Calgary Police Service said the incident took place around 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday at the Co-op Cannabis Dalhousie store, located at 5505 Shaganappi Trail N.W. Three of the four suspects were armed with weapons, including a firearm, a Taser and a baton. At the time of the incident, the suspects were described as follows: A male wearing a black Adidas jacket with its hood over a white baseball cap, black pants, blue Under Armour gloves, black face mask, black sunglasses and a nose piercing. A male wearing a black hoodie with the number “7” and “New York” printed on the front with black pants, black and red sneakers and a blue face mask. A male wearing a black hoodie with a white circle design, black shoes, white pants and black balaclava. A male wearing a black hoodie with a brown Burberry-style scarf and black face mask.