We talk with the Honourable Anne McLellan about the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation’s recommendations for how to legalize recreational consumption in Canada.

Featuring:

Anne McLellan, Chair of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation; Mark Pugash, Director of Corporate Communications, Toronto Police Service.

Should cannabis companies be allowed to advertise their products? We talk about the current advertising restrictions for medical cannabis and whether or not they should apply to the recreational industry.

Featuring:

Ian Chamandy, Founding Partner of Blueprint Business Architecture; John Fowler, CEO of Supreme Pharmaceuticals; Rebecca Jesseman, Senior Policy Advisor at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse; Deepak Anand, Executive Director of the Canadian National Medical Marijuana Association; Will Stewart, Managing Principal at Navigator Ltd.

What does legalizing cannabis at the federal level really mean? We use the genetics bottleneck to look at federal regulation for recreational consumption in Canada.

Featuring:

David Brown, Communications Director and Editor-in-Chief at Lift; Will Stewart, Managing Principal at Navigator Ltd.; Deepak Anand, Executive Director of the Canadian National Medical Marijuana Association.

Creating policy for recreation consumption of cannabis is not an easy task. There’s a natural tension between public health and industry interests and this week we’re discussing the public health perspective on legalization.

Featuring:

Rebecca Jesseman, Senior Policy Advisor at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse; Mark Pugash, Director of Corporate Communications, Toronto Police Service; Marcus Charles, Co-founder of JUJU Joints.

This week, we’re looking at other states that have gone through legalization. We’re comparing regulations in Colorado and Washington and discussing how they could apply to Canada.

Featuring:

John Prentice, CEO of Ample Organics; Rosy Mondin, Executive Director of the Cannabis Trade Alliance of Canada; Marcus Charles, Co-founder of JUJU Joints; Rebecca Jesseman, Senior Policy Advisor at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

How do Canadians feel about upcoming legalization? For this episode, we talk about the results from Navigator’s monthly poll that tracks public opinion on the changing market.

Featuring:

John Prentice, CEO of Ample Organics; Chris Kelly, Principal at Navigator Ltd.

We go through cannabis gets from seed-to-sale by talking about three companies that are using technology to make the process more efficient, more transparent, and to improve the consumer experience.

Featuring:

John Prentice, CEO of Ample Organics; Matei Olaru, CEO of Lift; Marcus Charles, Co-Founder of JUJU Joints.

For this episode, we’re talking about the professionalization of cannabis. How has the space developed? Where is the expertise? We talk about how people got started in the industry.

Featuring:

John Fowler, President and CEO of Supreme Pharmaceuticals; Rosy Mondin, Executive Director of the Cannabis Trade Alliance of Canada; Robert Benzie, Queen’s Park Bureau Chief for the Toronto Star; Hugo Alves, Partner and Corporate Commercial and Climate Change Lawyer at Bennett Jones; and Ian Chamandy, Founding Partner of Blueprint Business Architecture.

This is kind of like episode 0.5, to set the stage for our first episode. There are a number of competing objectives and goals with legalizing recreational marijuana use. There are also a lot of questions that need to be answered: How will distribution work? Who will be responsible for what? What will be legal on day one?

There’s confusion around the current regulations for marijuana. We clarify what’s legal and what’s not, who can sell it, who can buy it, and where dispensaries fit in.