Quick Hits

1. No single LP has captured investors’ interest—yet. They’re hoping one will soon. Financial Post

2. CEO Brendan Kennedy promised Tilray will hit profitability in Canada in “the next quarter or two.”
   Bloomberg

• Ousted CEO Bruce Linton was paid $9.33M in the fiscal year ending March 31, compared with $2.52M the previous year. Canopy paid him an additional $1.5M when they fired him in July.
• Of Canopy, Linton said, “She broke up with me. I’m still digging her,” and said he hoped the next CEO would be a woman from the tech sector.
  Yahoo Finance

Quick Hits

1. Even if you’ve never had either, everyone knows what a beer or a joint is. But cannabeverages are new to nearly everyone, and as such they’re hard to market.
   Globe and Mail

2. Food farmers are facing off with cannabis farmers again, arguing cannabis is a commercial product, not a crop, and should not receive lower agricultural tax rates. The provincial government says they’re looking into changing the tax rates for LPs.
   CBC Calgary, Edmonton Journal

• The woman reported the Customs and Border Protection officer asked her if she was carrying “leafy greens,” which she interpreted to mean cannabis in bud form, or cannabis products containing THC. When a search of her belongings discovered CBD oil, she was fined $500 for failing to declare it, fingerprinted, and denied entry to the U.S.
• If she wishes to return, she must make a $600 application.

Quick Hits

1. It’s easier than it used to be to treat an epileptic child with CBD, but there’s still popular resistance to giving even non-impairing MED to kids.
   The Star

2. Teens aged 12 to 17 caught with less than five grams of REC won’t be criminally charged, those caught with more than five grams are unlikely to be incarcerated.
   The Leaf

3. Edmonton police claim the reason they’re ticketing increasing numbers for drug-impaired driving while numbers remain flat everywhere else in the country is that they’re better trained to recognize stoned drivers. On an unrelated note, this weekend Edmonton will host a demonstration of the newly federally approved Abbot SoToxa saliva-tester, which is as questionably accurate and constitutional as its predecessor, the Drager DrugTest 5000.
   CBC Edmonton, CTV News

• The Ontario Cannabis Store returned $2.9M in CannTrust products it called “non-conforming” (the OCS did not specify in what manner it did not conform). This is not related to Health Canada, who have not recalled CannTrust products.
  Bloomberg, Global News

• Denmark requires MED to be completely pesticide free. In a press release, Stenocare A/S wrote, “It now appears that CannTrust introduced a more general use of Health Canada approved pesticides in the new greenhouse where cultivation of medical cannabis plants is located.”
• CannTrust ended an exclusive brokerage agreement with alcohol giant Breakthru Beverage‘s subsidiary Kindred Partners, which the two companies launched as a CannTrust brokerage arm. During that process, Breakthrough bought more than 900,000 shares of CannTrust at $10.23. They are now trading in the $3.50-range. Globe and Mail

Quick Hits

1. Despite having hired more staff, Health Canada is overwhelmed by the volume of research-license applications. It has caused backlogs of research projects waiting for Health Canada’s irrationally hard-to-achieve approval.
   GrowthOp, CBC Kitchener-Waterloo, Science

• In the new opinion piece, three rheumatology MDs address sensible concerns such as lack of reliable clinical evidence about the effect of MED on various conditions, the politicization of a medical subject, and the power of MED corporations to influence public perception of medical need.
• The piece enters stranger territory when the authors lament, “The perception of cannabis as being safer than opioids may have been reinforced by its recent legalization for recreational use in some jurisdictions.”
• The authors decry the “emergent medical cannabis industry” as non-medical. They also criticize patients who expect doctors to be knowledgeable about cannabis.
• ER physician Ian Mitchell identified connections between one author and oft-fined pharma producer UCB, and noted other pharma producers spent fortunes to oppose MED legalization before profiting from it.
  Twitter
• Trina Fraser, Deepak Anand, and Wildfire Canada CEO Mark Spear all attacked the piece.
  Twitter

Quick Hits

1. Global News explored cannabis addiction in detail.
2. A survey of focus groups found most proposed health warnings for edibles were understandable, but many misunderstood visual warnings to avoid pairing alcohol and cannabis as a suggestion one might enjoy doing just that. They also thought the phrase “start low and go slow” sacrificed dosage information in favour of rhyming. iPolitics

• The OCS has made only four announcements on its website since January, takes weeks to respond to email requests for information and only then redirects the public to its media office.
• Armstrong noted most of what we know about OCS comes from Statistics Canada and from the Ontario ombudsman, who received more complaints about the OCS than any other provincial institution.
• The reason Ontario has allotted REC retail via lotteries has been its claim of continuing supply shortages, but the OCS does not make public data about shipments and inventory, nor does it post its pricing policies as does sister agency the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
• There was also no public tender for warehousing and distribution after the LCBO was separated from the Ontario Cannabis Store.
  Twitter—Presumably Paul

Quick Hits

1. Police have shut down a huge portion of the country’s physical dispensaries, but online dispensaries are a bigger challenge. Some hope the legal market improving will dry up online demand. Globe and Mail

2. MED patients in Halifax say dispensary raids infringe their human rights.
   Halifax Today, Global News

• In an appearance on TVO’s The Agenda also featuring Globe and Mail cannabis reporter Mark Rendell, Roach lamented that the lottery format forced the province’s small number of cannabis experts to compete at the same level as well-funded businesspeople who know nothing about cannabis but want to get cannabis-wealthy.
• Rendell noted while LPs and private REC retailers weren’t allowed to enter the lottery, the sole-proprietors who won will nearly all partner with major REC retail companies like Fire & Flower and National Access Cannabis.

• MJ Biz‘s Matt Lamers said, “This sloppy lottery is probably, and thankfully, the last.”
  Twitter

• Each applicant needed to prove access to a retail space and provide bank assurance they had access to $250,000 in working capital.
• To apply for a license, winners have until next Wednesday to pay some $6,000 in license fees, and show a $50,000 letter of credit.
• This cut the number of applications from more than 17,000 in January to 4,864. As with last time, many entrants and winners applied as sole-proprietors, despite the difficulties sole-proprietors endured following the last lottery.
  MJ Biz Daily, Twitter, London Free Press

• One Oshawa address, used on 173 applications, appeared twice on the list of 42 winners, and three times on the waiting list.
  Global News
• Addresses listed on the website of REC retailer High Life as “coming soon” were filed as secured addresses by more than 650 applicants. One storefront in Barrie listed as an “upcoming” High Life property appeared on 91 applications, one of which was a winner, while another such address in Toronto had 96 applications, one of which is on the waiting list.
  Financial Post
• Addresses associated with High Life were on six of the winning applications.
  Globe and Mail

• Lawyer Trina Fraser said, “It wouldn’t be in the regulator’s interest to have three stores located that closely together. […] They just can’t let that happen.”
  Global News

• Neither of CAFE’s owners—the Lamborghini-driving former wrestler or the ace counterfeiter known for introducing convincing fake $100 bills across Canada in the early 2000s—are listed on the application.
• The application is in the name of TV and film producer Robert Heydon, whose address is listed as a single-family home in Hamilton. Along with a film-financing company registered to the address, Heydon incorporated another company, Kind Farms Inc, last month.
• Heydon told the CBC he has “no connection” to CAFE or its owners and has never met them, but would not say how he chose the address, or how he knows landlord Ali Gillani, who’s presently facing three charges related to the CAFE raids. Gillani was previously CEO of a company cofounded by counterfeiter/CAFE co-owner Wes Weber. CBC Toronto
• Trina Fraser said, “Expect a refusal and subsequent court challenge on this one.” Twitter

• On Reddit, Toronto REC users compared the amount of packaging left after one ounce of legal cannabis versus the child-proof, odor-sealed minimal packaging employed by illicit dispensary CAFE.

Quick Hits

1. Andrea Dobbs, co-founder of Vancouver dispensary turned legal REC retailer Village Bloomery, called on LPs to find ways to differentiate more clearly between product packaging—such as using one colour but multiple textures, or different shades of the same colour.
   Twitter

2. Newfoundland independent REC retailer Thomas H. Clarke—whose store THC Distribution made the first legal cannabis in Canada last fall—says that he’s forced to buy cannabis from the provincial government at 8% less than he sells it for—and that’s before excise taxes. Finance minister Tom Osborne said REC retailers knew how tight the margin would be when they were licensed, but the government is ” more than willing to discuss what possibilities are there to make their operations more profitable.”
   CBC Newfoundland

• A fellow Maritime MED activist said police have been targeting MED dispensaries and patients are “at a loss, devastated.”
  CTV News

Quick Hits

1. Former RCMP constable Jeffrey Meyers became the first individual to receive a Health Canada license for commercial medical sale. The former organized-crime investigator will broker deals between those inside the industry and with MED patients—he is not licensed to possess cannabis on site.
   Leafly

2. The Financial Post profiled Aphria‘s return to the limelight, even as some of the accusations lobbed at the firm by short sellers last December continue to cast a shadow.
   Financial Post