• Though the company doesn’t have a policy banning employees from using cannabis after hours and a company doctor concluded he did not have a cannabis use disorder, the employee was forced to take counselling and twice-monthly urine tests.
• In a 52-page decision, the arbitrator concluded called the treatment “highly intrusive, controlling his daily routine with call-in obligations and demanding he give bodily fluids twice per month.”

Quick Hits

1. In another sign Alberta is dominating post-legalization cannabis, Edmonton city council is studying how to set rules for the country’s first legal cannabis lounges.
   Global News
2. Manitoba rolled out its “Know My Limits” education campaign for edibles, telling Manitobans to store them safely away from kids, and to “point out the pot” at gatherings so people don’t accidentally consume infused items. The province also plans to ban public edibles consumption.
   Winnipeg Free Press, Victoria Times-Colonist

• PTSD sufferers who used MED were seven times less likely to have depressive episodes, and five times less likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-MED users with PTSD.
  CTV News
• Some Canadian experts cast doubt on a recent Lancet Psychiatry review of 83 studies since 1980 related to cannabis and mental health which concluded “there is scarce evidence to suggest that cannabinoids improve” mental health conditions. CBC Health
• Dr. Peter Selby, chief of psychiatry at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, noted there are a variety of flaws in decades-old research concerning products then illegal in Canada and still largely illegal elsewhere.

Quick Hits

1. Per Statistics Canada numbers, more than 1M Canadians use MED, but fewer than 400,000 are registered MED users.
   Twitter—CFAMM
2. Walk-in clinics in 74 of Canada’s 400 Walmart stores will offer cannabis education delivered by Canopy‘s MED branch Spectrum Therapeutics.
   Leafly

• If Kohoko gets a REC retail license, she says she will open that store either in a separate building on the same property, or upstairs from her unlicensed dispensary, which she says is only the jurisdiction of her Nation’s band council, not the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.
  Ottawa Citizen
• While some believed the AGCO’s willingness to work with an unlicensed dispensary operator showed Ontario’s desperation to begin licensing First Nations REC stores, Kohoko’s decision may present a kink in the Ford government’s plan to eradicate unlicensed cannabis on First Nations.
  Twitter—Jordan Brant
• Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, RCMP have taken a novel approach to avoiding the legal snakepit of busting First Nations dispensaries. Instead of harassing dispensaries on Millbrook First Nation, some RCMP have reportedly taken to stopping only the cars of apparently non-Native customers leaving the dispensaries.
  Truro Daily

Quick Hits

1. If you’re on a plane from one Canadian airport to another and the plane has to land in the United States, dump any cannabis you’ve got in your carry-ons—the American border people do not mess around with this stuff, despite it being legal at the state level in many places.
   CBC British Columbia
2. Nova Scotia RCMP said a parent reported finding cannabis edibles in her child’s Halloween candy. The child was one of a group of eight, and was the only child to be given the edibles, which were labelled as containing THC.
   CTV News, CBC Nova Scotia

• Unfinished inventory (an open-ended term applicable to all inventory that is for some reason not ready to sell) has nearly tripled from 118,000 to 328,000 kilograms in the last eight months.
• It’s unclear how much of it can eventually be sold. BMO Capital Markets warned in June that much of the 150,000 kilograms of unfinished inventory LPs reported for March might be too poor quality to sell.
  Bloomberg
• TerrAscend announced it would miss its revenue targets both for the quarter and the year. CEO Michael Nashat called existing provincial inventories “scary.”
  Newswire, Globe and Mail

• The Globe ran a deep examination of how “stock promoters, hedge fund managers, investment banks and law firms that have helped raise close to $8-billion from public investors since 2017, and have clipped hundreds of millions of dollars in fees in the process.”
  Globe and Mail

• The number of Canadians buying legal REC has doubled in the year since legalization.
  GrowthOp

Quick Hits

1. Two US class-action suits are pending against LP Sundial, charging the company didn’t disclose that Zenabis returned $2.5M worth of product contaminated with mould and parts of rubber gloves. So far Sundial has call
   MJ Biz Daily
2. Italy stripped Aurora of one of the lots the company won this summer, saying Aurora was not in compliance with EU Good Manufacturing Practice (EU-GMP) standards.
   MJ Biz Daily

Quick Hits

1. Hexo CEO Sebastien St-Louis said he would not step down despite weak sales. He said, “I don’t feel that my work here is done by any stretch.”
   Bloomberg
2. Second Cup announced plans to change its name to the questionably pronounceable Aegis ahead of expanding further into REC retail.
   Financial Post

• Dr. Horacio Arruda, national director of public health for the provincial ministry of health and social services, issued a directive to the SQDC telling them not to sell vape products.
• The US Centres for Disease Control finally announced VAPI was linked to banned thickening agent Vitamin E Acetate (or “honey cut”), which will not be allowed in regulated Canadian products.
  New York Times
• Quebec has been heading toward this ban since the July announcement that extracts with a THC concentration of greater than 30% would be prohibited. (Most illicit vape pens on the commercial market boast untested THC concentrations of 80% to 90%.)
  Montreal Gazette

• After the law raising the age to 21 comes into force, a small number of SQDC employees between 18 and 21 will be allowed to sell cannabis but not consume it.
  Global News

Quick Hit

1. The Workers Compensation Board of PEI dropped vaporizers from their medical coverage due to Health Canada warnings stemming from VAPI.
   CBC PEI

• Ontario will not give up its monopoly on delivery, but will allow retailers to offer “click-and-collect” service by phone or online, so customers can see inventory levels and reserve stock in individual REC stores for pickup.
  Globe and Mail
• LPs will be allowed to open farm-gate REC retail stores at each of their production sites (a plan the Ford government originally announced in October 2018).
  MJ Biz Daily
• The Ontario Cannabis Store is continuing talks with LPs and REC retailers about privatizing REC wholesale.

• Lawyer Trina Fraser called for full retailer delivery. (In April, the province canceled a REC delivery tender.)
  Twitter—Trina Fraser, Globe and Mail
• In a damning assessment, MJ Biz Daily‘s Matt Lamers said, “Click-&-collect? Who cares when you only have 24 stores open. A sideshow. Ontario could barely fill 1/2 a page of the nearly 200 page ‘economic plan’ on one of the fastest growing industries in Canada.”
  Twitter—Matt Lamers
• Global Public Affairs cannabis analyst Roderick C. Elliot predicted it would be another 18 to 36 months “before we start to see retail approved and built in Ontario.”
  Twitter—Roderick C. Elliot

• The Cannalysts estimated Ontario’s glacial REC retail rollout has cost the province $325M in economic revenue, $26M in provincial sales tax, and $25M in excise tax since legalization.
  Twitter—TheCannalysts

• Those 65 and older are the least likely group to consume cannabis. However, the number of people older than 65 consuming cannabis in 2019 (more than 400,000) has increased nearly tenfold since 2012 (roughly 40,000). Le Devoir—In French
• Per Statistics Canada’s latest numbers, more than 25% of 65+ cannabis consumers are new to cannabis—more than twice the 10% of new users aged 25 to 44.

Quick Hits

1. One of the 92 Canadians who have received expedited pardons for cannabis possession convictions described the process to The Leaf. Turns out she would have preferred expungement.
   The Leaf
2. Supreme Cannabis announced the departure of co-founder and Chief Advocacy Officer John Fowler, shocking many across the sector, where Fowler is well liked.
   Twitter—Jameson Berkow

• Clinical lead Dr. Pippa Hawley originally expected to be able to begin recruiting patients in June, to deliver results within a year.
• Delays were partly due to Whistler Medical Marijuana, the LP from which researchers had arranged to procure cannabis oil, being acquired by Aurora. Vancouver Sun

Quick Hits

1. Rising MED prices are forcing some patients to buy unregulated product on the illicit market.
   CBC Ottawa