Selling Legal Pot In L.C.B.O. Makes Alot Of Sense. Premier Says. NF

[manitoubass2]

Since this thread was initially started there has been a huge boom of medical marijuana use here.

 

Seems the only people that arent on it are those subject to drug tests at work

[manitoubass2]

I should say prescription marijuana use

[misfish]

Way too much time and effort going into this, I believe it is a tactical distraction. Those who need it know how to get it already.

 

 

Is that NEED IT, or DO IT ?

[Garnet]

It's being legalized because gov across North America have decide who is going to make the money and how.

[Old Ironmaker]

The upside in that we might empty some jail cells where there are many that are incarcerated for having been found with small amounts of weed in their possession and or not being able to travel into Canada or elsewhere where it has been decriminalized and in some cases legal. The number of people, mostly Black or Hispanic that are serving lengthy Federal sentences for possession with the purpose of trafficking in US Federal and State prisons is an utter disgrace. Some are serving life sentences in back water States.

 

Under the Ontario Health and Safety Act for Mines and Mining Plants employees that are taking any prescription drugs are responsible to report those drugs to management. A little know section of the Act that was hardly enforced during my days as both a Supervisor in a Mining Plant as well as my experience with the MOL. I'm sure it is still in the little green book.

[manitoubass2]

Its still in there OI.

 

When speaking about marijuana, doesnt matter if its prescription or not. Zero tolerance they refer to it as.

 

I dont know any company in NW ontario that allows medical marijuana use for its employees

[fish_fishburn]

To bad LCBO sucks to be you.

[DRIFTER_016]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-task-force-advises-wide-ranging-legalization-of-recreational-marijuana/article33307322/?cmpid=PM1216

[Sterling]

Its still in there OI.

 

When speaking about marijuana, doesnt matter if its prescription or not. Zero tolerance they refer to it as.

 

I dont know any company in NW ontario that allows medical marijuana use for its employees

 

Maybe I'm taking crazy pills but my understanding is that medical marijuana (as in - prescribed) is allowed in any workplace. Surely it falls within the same ruleset as chronic painkillers - don't take them while operating heavy machinery.

[manitoubass2]

 

Maybe I'm taking crazy pills but my understanding is that medical marijuana (as in - prescribed) is allowed in any workplace. Surely it falls within the same ruleset as chronic painkillers - don't take them while operating heavy machinery.

Nope. Prescribed is treated the exact same as illegal usage.

 

Not that its my battle but someones gonna win a lawsuit over it soon. Id bet money on it.

[SirCranksalot]

Looks like the feds nixed the LCBO idea.

[dave524]

Looks like the feds nixed the LCBO idea.

 

Why would they want a provincial outfit getting their grubby little hands on the profits/taxes, no surprises there

[Dara]

Looks like the feds nixed the LCBO idea.

OMG, somebody doesn't agree with Kathleen

 

My money says it will happen anyway though...thats just a suggestion right now

Edited December 15, 2016 by Dara

[fish_fishburn]

Whats she gonna do now. Kathleen was going to use lcbo and ccbo to pay down some of our 300 billion dollar debt when she sells it off. She is thinking up something sweet for us all and shes suffering in the popularity polls with a 16% favour.

[GbayGiant]

Good read for the Layman.

 

 

Yesterday, the largest ever coordinated attack on business owners was carried out by the Toronto Police Service. In an action reminiscent of Operation Soap – the violent invasion and shutdown of several LGBTQ businesses in 1981 – Project Claudia involved police laying siege to dozens of cannabis dispensaries in the GTA and stealing millions of dollars’ worth of inventory, crippling their ability to serve patients.

Why did this happen?

Who is to blame?

I, and others, have covered the ‘why’ in articles on this site but, in this post, I’d like to focus on ‘whom.’

Ever since 2012, when the new MMPR was proposed, our industry has been in a fight for its very existence against a criminal organization that has managed to convince our government that they, despite having zero experience, know what’s best for patients, and the businesses that have been safely and successfully serving them for decades.

The Shills Ljubica Kostovic

In a post appearing in the Globe & Mail, a day after the assaults and robberies, Ms. Kostovic called the actions “long-awaited” and “welcome news for patients everywhere.” She claimed that risking liberty and property to faithfully serve patients with cannabis of far higher quality than LPs is “giving compassion a bad name” and that she, as a supposed patient herself, can’t possibly risk buying product from a dispensary.

The real story here though is that Ms. Kostovic is the Director of Communications of GrowWise Health, a clinic designed to shovel patients in to the money-starved maw of LPs. These clinics will typically accept kickbacks from the ones they write medical documents for, or charge patients for one. A practice that physicians like Dr. Rob Kamermans are hypocritically being sued for.

Ronan Levy

Mr. Levy is more prolific than Ms. Kostovic, but no different. He’s the co-founder of Canadian Cannabis Clinics, another medical document mill for the LPs. In an absolutely off-the-rails opinion piece in the Toronto Star, Levy cooks up as much fear pornography as he possibly can in order to cast doubt on dispensaries.

Equating dispensary owners to drug pushers, he lauds LP’s for being “cleaner (tested for mould, viruses and pesticides), safer and cheaper than anything you can buy at a dispensary.”

This is a common theme in LP-speak; their product is clean and tested, while you may as well be playing Russian roulette going to a dispensary.

You’d think he’d be able to cite some actual evidence to prove his case. After all, Ronan is a lawyer and he ostensibly understands what the burden of proof is. He expects us to forget that LPs Tilray, Peace Naturals, and Whistler have all faced product recalls due to contamination and unsafe growing practices. Another early LP, Greenleaf Medicinals, shut down because growing a plant was too much for them to handle safely.

LP product is also incapable of meeting the requirements for organic product certification due to the allowable pesticides under the MMPR, while most of what is sold in dispensaries does.

These shills rely on lies and misinformation in order to disparage businesses that have been operating safely for over a decade. But it’s no accident that “BC Bud” is known all over the world.

Dispensaries sell amazing, safe, high quality cannabis that LPs can’t match. Get over it.

The Front Groups Leafly

A popular software application across North America for finding local cannabis strains. The Canadian experience has been somewhat different though than our US counterparts.

Leafly’s Canadian customers have repeatedly complained about the rates they charge, as well as the poor results they get in terms of their brand exposure. Dispensaries are consistently buried under a mountain of illegal LP advertising.

Owned by Privateer Holdings, Leafly is but one of a portfolio of companies that chiefly includes the LP Tilray, and Tilray has been no friend to the dispensaries.

If you’re using Leafly, then not only are you handing your data over to companies seeking to destroy and monopolize our industry, you’re also helping fund your own oppression. Don’t be a pawn in their game.

Cannabis Canada (formerly CMCIA)

This is the primary trade association and lobby group employed by the LPs. In a January 2016 press release, the group encouraged violence against dispensary owners and parroted the fear porn that so many of the LP shills are known for.

Executive director Colette Rivet, spent her career up to this point working for organizations like the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. These same organizations have spent decades marginalizing the medical utility of cannabis, contributing to the hysteria fueling violence, and stonewalling efforts to improve patient access to this important medicine.

Their unscientific approach to cannabis, and repeated inflammatory and unsupported assertions about it, have only caused confusion and prevented evidence-based legislation from emerging.

Cam Battley, chair of their advocacy committee said the assaults on Toronto dispensary owners were “a long time coming,” and that “we warned the municipal government last fall that things were getting out of hand.”

Cannabis Trade Alliance of Canada (CTAC)

With all the bad press surrounding LPs and their front groups it’s no surprise to see that new or rebranded front groups are constantly emerging. Launched in early 2016, this new group is proposing bringing back all the worst elements of the MMAR in order to satisfy Justice Phelan’s order from the Allard trial.

In a document published on their website they recommend bringing back the PUPL and DPPL licenses (albeit under different names) under substantially the same rules. Caregivers would be able to produce for only four patients at a time and only 12 plants per patient.

It’s no surprise that they would recommend a heavily restrictive, doomed-to-fail set of regulations in response to the ruling. For decades, patients have been suing the government for repeatedly violating their Charter rights, and with every success the government (deliberately?) botches their revisions. Why would they break tradition when it comes to the Allard ruling?

In the Sfetkopoulous trial of 2008, the court ruled that the one-to-one producer/patient ratio imposed by the MMAR was unjustifiable. In response, the government raised it to two-to-one… gee, thanks. Now we’re supposed to accept a limit of four caregivers?

Do these people really expect to be taken seriously?

Apparently so because in early May, CTAC sent lobbyist Kate Dalgleish, who is also lobbying for CTAC federally, to the City of Toronto to lobby on their behalf on the issue of dispensaries. The CTAC website reveals very little about who they are and where they come from but the lobbyist registry identifies their head office as being in the HSBC building in downtown Vancouver. Take from that what you may.

CTAC’s Executive Director, Rosy Mondin, is another lawyer and also the owner of Soma Labs, which performs extractions on organic compounds and provides R&D services for vitamins and nutritional supplements.

The Licenced Producers (LPs) Tweed (Canopy Growth Corporation)

What began as one of Canada’s first LPs (thanks primarily to their deep connections to the Liberal Party) has since grown in to a multi-headed hydra of industrial destruction and consumer disappointment. After renaming themselves to Canopy Growth Corporation, they acquired another LP by the name of Bedrocan who proudly produces gamma-irradiated product.

Tweed’s CEO, Bruce Linton, has a long history of anti-dispensary statements and one doesn’t have to do much digging to find them. More interestingly though is the financial story behind this firm.

As one of the first publicly-traded LPs, they have to consistently make their financial statements available to the public. To an educated eye, the company is an unmitigated disaster.

The company’s cash flow statement is completely upside down with investor money coming in, then going out on operations. Somewhere along the line I think Canopy’s executives forgot that the whole point of a company was to have the money moving in the other direction.

At their current cash burn rate, they only have enough funds in the bank to last another year or so, two at most.

Canopy is definitely feeling the heat, and their failure will be a spectacular one if they can’t find a way to a positive operational cash flow. How much more dilution will their owners be willing to take before the stock completely crashes? Over $137 million has been sunk in to the company thus far and still no signs of positive returns.

Tilray (a.k.a. Lafitte Ventures)

Another of the first LPs to receive a license, Tilray has long attracted the ire of the cannabis community due to their deeply troubling actions and statements against dispensaries. Even Kirk Tousaw has remarked that their marketing strategy hinges on liberally insulting home-growers and casting aspersions upon dispensaries.

They retained Ginny Movat, of Crestview Strategy, to lobby the City of Toronto on their behalf. A seasoned political operative, who has worked for both the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as well as the Ontario PC Party, Ginny has had extensive communications with Toronto council members, staff and City employees beginning Feb. 24 of this year. Most notably with councillor Joe Cressy, advocating for a “strong, well-regulated medical cannabis system.”

For LPs, a well-regulated system is one that ensures their cartel can operate unchallenged and continue to extract monopoly profits from distressed patients. As mentioned before, they’re also using their cannabis app Leafly so that the industry hands them not only the rope, but the money to hang dispensary owners with.

Conclusion

When animals are backed in to a corner, they become violent and unpredictable. We’re witnessing the same behaviour from the licensed producers, their front organizations and shills. As the failure of LPs becomes more and more evident, expect these cries of frustration to only get louder.

We aren’t dealing with respectable businesspeople who face their competition honourably, and with deference to their ultimate authority, consumers.

We’re dealing with a criminal organization that has co-opted our government because it’s easier (and legal) to have police be your hired thugs. They think that it’s not only possible, but preferable, for governments to strip away the rights of their citizens in order to guarantee their profit margins.

They think that spreading fear, hate and violence is the way to win market share.

Don’t let them.

If you care about this industry, and the patients who depend on it, then you must take action. Medical or recreational, we all have something at stake and it’s no longer acceptable to be sitting on the sidelines.

When those four bath houses were raided in 1981, thousands took to the streets and it was not pretty. There were riots, hunger strikes, and repeated action until the affected people got what they wanted.

It’s time for us to do the same and, when we’re done, politicians should be quaking in their boots at the prospect of the cannabis vote coming down on their heads like a guillotine.

Boycott all LPs, their associates and front organizations. Encourage people to do the same. Join the Cannabis Growers of Canada, the only national group representing the true interests of the cannabis industry.

As the great US statesman Frederik Douglass once said; “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

It’s time our demands were heard.

[Old Ironmaker]

Maybe you didn't get the memo GBayGiant.

 

Before it does get locked I have to tell you something I saw last week. I was in the east end of Hamilton the other day. On my way to get to my appointment I walked past one of the dispensaries. I back tracked and walked in. It is nothing but a head shop, dirty, grungy, music blaring and the people that were in there would not be the folks on my Christmas card list. They were each and everyone stoned out of their gourds. Not 1 was over 30 and I don't have X-Ray vision so I couldn't tell what chronic pain they had. I know they weren't feeling much pain at all. I bet they thought I was a Cop. They all froze when I walked in.

 

If these dispensaries are all the same they are a joke. More than one doper I know that grows their own and sells it drove several miles to get their script. Makes it easier doing business.

 

De criminalize, yes, legalize, not yet.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Old Ironmaker

[GbayGiant]

Well Sir.

.its that or

you can buy poison off of the new Government set up Large producers who ALL spray their medications? with poison. Because they are allowed because they think it is safe..In order for them to produce a crop.

Sick people can grow their own for themselves and they certainly do not need anything sprayed on their meds.

This is the point of the post.

Recreational is different? That's where these Large Produces are going. They plan on poisoning people for profit.

Soon ANYONE will be able to grow their own with our new laws coming.

 

LP's knowingly poison people.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

in spite of what you may have seen in a shop that probably caters to 1000's of different of people a day because they feel actually safer buying like they have for the last ...60 years?

Rather than buying from government appointed poison producer ( ) like they TRIED to force the sick people into doing but they won in court thankfully and can do for themselves. now

Soon Recreational will be able to grow as well in their back yard.

 

Sorry for the smell but some people don't like the small of fish...but hey... try and not let it bother you any .

As much as you think and feel that it is about getting high..its about staying alive for some.

Your attitude won't let you see that no matter how much it really helps others.

[lookinforwalleye]

I think GB nailed it.....My son uses a dispensary for products he uses Cannabis as a way to help with anxiety and also to combat the side effects of the drugs he takes for his very serious illness...I don`t consider my son a stoner I consider him a brave young man for battling something that struck him in the prime of his life....stoner no sir!!!

[Hoppy]

GbayGiant please cite the article source you posted. it bias and written from a profiteers perspective.

 

 

Ironworker decriminalization makes it legal for the well off and still punishes everyone else. We'll have more incarcerations from non payment than under the current laws.

[AKRISONER]

honestly iron, every dispensary I have been in has been the complete opposite. Clean, well lit, straight forward.

 

Consider the neighborhood I guess.

[John Bacon]

 

Soon ANYONE will be able to grow their own with our new laws coming.

 

Soon Recreational will be able to grow as well in their back yard.

 

 

Based on Trudeau's comments about the importance of keeping it away from minors, I would expect the sales to be highly regulated once it is legalized. It may not be much easier to grow your own after legalization than it is now.

Edited January 23, 2017 by JohnBacon

[fish_fishburn]

I think what we will have when all is said and done will be Prohibition 2.0. The Libs are going to mess this file up in the worst way possible. I have friends who buy from Lp's and have tried half a dozen different suppliers and don't bother anymore due to the garbage they sell.

[TJQ]

I think enough has been said... btw.. I am and always have been pro legalisation.