Pubdate: Sun, 12 Jun 2016
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2016 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Christopher Guly

WILL CANADA BE THE NEW CANNABIS CAPITAL?

The Move to Legalize Marijuana Represents a Huge Market for U.S. Investors.

OTTAWA - Colorado and Washington may have jumped ahead in the race to 
become North America's marijuana kings, but Canada is now positioned 
to take a lead in the booming multibillion-dollar industry.

Canadian leaders could legalize recreational marijuana use as soon as 
next year, potentially opening the door for pot to be sold at 
pharmacies and province-run liquor stores. Medical cannabis has been 
legal in the country since 2001.

Under the new legislation, marijuana growers and distributors in 
Canada would also find themselves free of the trip wires that make 
the pot business in the U.S. risky - such as being barred from 
opening bank accounts or doing business with big-money investors.

"There is a lot of excitement and optimism from marijuana businesses 
and entrepreneurs in the U.S., who have their fingers crossed that 
Canada is going to pull this off," says Chris Walsh, editorial 
director of Marijuana Business Daily, published in Rhode Island.

Canada's expected move to legalize recreational pot won't lead to 
instant world domination. But the plan represents a huge market for 
U.S. businesses and investors who have already identified an 
opportunity north of the border, Walsh says.

Two years ago, Seattle-based Privateer Holdings Inc. became the first 
American-owned company to open a commercial medicinal cannabis 
production facility in Canada. Derek Ogden, chief executive of of the 
Ottawa-based National Access Cannabis network of education clinics, 
says he believes Canadian pot producers could one day export their 
product to the U.S. and, conversely, import weed from the U.S., 
though he acknowledges that would happen only under a reciprocal 
trade agreement, and only if the U.S. legalizes marijuana at the federal level.

Canadian Health Minister Jane Philpott told a United Nations General 
Assembly in April that the country would introduce legislation next 
spring to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana.

It would be the law of the land, unlike the state-by-state 
checkerboard of laws in the U.S. Although a state may legalize 
marijuana use, the federal government still classifies pot as a 
Schedule 1 drug, along with heroin and LSD.

Marijuana is a $4.3-billion industry in the U.S. But in Canada, where 
there are now fewer than 30 government-licensed companies, it 
generates no more than $150 million in sales.

Former Toronto police Chief Bill Blair, now a liberal member of 
Parliament, was appointed Canada's marijuana czar by Prime Minister 
Justin Trudeau and asked to figure out where and how pot should be 
sold. A federal task force is expected to forward recommendations to 
Trudeau by November.

Ogden, who spent more than 25 years as an officer with the Royal 
Canadian Mounted Police, is among those eager to see to see the 
results of Blair's game plan.

Currently, only licensed producers are allowed to distribute medical 
marijuana by mail to people authorized to use it by a doctor, 
although that's expected to change by August following a Federal 
Court ruling this year that ordered Health Canada to allow patients 
to grow their own therapeutic pot.

Storefront dispensaries are banned in Canada, a point illustrated 
when police recently raided 43 unlicensed operations in Toronto and 
seized 595 pounds of pot. Criminal charges were filed against 90 
dispensary owners and employees.

But on the West Coast, Vancouver has flouted the law and recently 
issued its first business license to a medical marijuana dispensary 
under regulations the city established last June. Victoria, the 
capital city of British Columbia, is planning similar regulations.

Canadian pharmacies have expressed interest in selling medical 
cannabis, while province-run liquor stores want a piece of the 
recreational marijuana market - an idea that both Trudeau and Blair support.

Ogden says, "It's a matter of time before medical cannabis is legal 
in the U.S."

"On the recreational side," he added, "governments like Canada's look 
at it as a revenue source and feel that it makes no sense to exclude 
all of this potential money from their coffers when people are going 
to continue to consume cannabis, and preventing them from doing so 
legally is just going to drive them to the black market."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom