canada

  • canada cannabis stock brokerAs Canadians deal with the highest inflation in decades and broadening price hikes, one industry remains locked in a lengthy trend of discounting and bargain rates: cannabis. Laden with inventory, producers and retailers of marijuana have been slashing the prices of their products to bring in cash and fight for market share – a situation that is wildly different from the state of affairs in most other industries, in which broad economic forces are pushing up prices among competitors. Prices for recreational and medicinal cannabis have dropped by 8.3 per cent and 10.2 per cent, respectively, over the past year, and by roughly 25 per cent in both categories since the end of 2018, according to Statistics Canada.

  • canada safe heroin dcrRoughly 66 times every single day in British Columbia, someone calls 911 for a suspected drug overdose. And 66 times every day, an operator answers one of those calls, assesses the situation, and dispatches firefighters or paramedics (never police). And then those professionals rush out and, nearly 66 times every single day, they save a person’s life. “When BCEHS [BC Emergency Health Services] paramedics respond to a potential overdose patient, the patient has a 99 percent chance of survival,” reads an email from Shannon Miller, a spokesperson for the agency. If Vancouver is so great with harm reduction, why are overdose numbers there so high? An analysis of relevant data can help explain.

  • cannabis seedlingsWhen Canopy Growth Corp. announced a plan to acquire cannabis researcher Ebbu Inc. for US$330 million last October, it touted the company’s intellectual property as the primary reason for the deal, mentioning it five times in the short press release. A year later, Canopy is struggling to turn that intellectual property into patents. One of Ebbu’s first applications was rejected twice by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. When it was then narrowed significantly in a renewed attempt at approval, it was rejected a third time. The difficulties Ebbu has faced in securing patents point to a broader issue in the pot sector, where many companies tout their intellectual property but few have successfully obtained exclusive rights to their inventions.

  • canada safe supply cocaineThe Drug User Liberation Front, a Vancouver-based activist group, made a serious statement on June 23. During a protest in the city’s Downtown Eastside, they gave out free, checked and illegal drugs to their community. They did this in response to British Columbia’s monthly overdose death numbers reaching a then–record high of 170 in May. Over 200 people are estimated to have received small quantities of drugs, including opium and cocaine, at the event. Given the dangerous adulteration of the drug supply, exacerbated by the pandemic, there’s a good chance that one or two lives were saved that day. (See also: A domestic safe supply of injectable heroin would save lives)

  • In its report for 2022, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), the “independent, quasi-judicial expert body” that monitors the implementation of the UN drug control conventions, focuses on the legalisation of cannabis. Each year, in the first chapter of its annual report, the Board addresses a specific issue it deems important for drug policy discussions and the functioning of the international drug control system. This year, cannabis legalisation is the focus, because as many have noticed, a decade after the first state legally regulated adult recreational cannabis “a growing number of States have adopted policies that permit the use of cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes”.

  • Ontario is undoubtedly in the midst of an opioid overdose crisis. From January to September 2018, an incredible 1,031 Ontarians died of an overdose. The number of deaths in the province is second only to the 1,155 deaths in British Columbia, dubbed the “ground zero” of the overdose epidemic in North America. Yet with no signs of the crisis slowing down, the Ontario government announced in April that they would abruptly halt funding for several safe injection sites — an unprecedented and dangerous step backwards in curtailing the public health emergency.