Canada Legalizes Recreational Cannabis

Canada Legalizes Recreational Cannabis

Canada Legalizes Recreational Cannabis


For some, the new development means October 17 is going to be lit, but the government is focusing on how legalization and regulation will make for better marijuana education, less access for teens and lower organized crime rates.

Canada just became the second nation in the world - and the first industrialized nation - to legalize the purchase and consumption of recreational marijuana. Marijuana will also not be sold in the same location as alcohol or tobacco.

The minimum legal age to buy and consume pot in Canada will be set at 18, but the bill allows provinces and territories to increase the minimum age.

"This historic legislation will end prohibition and replace it with a sensible, responsible and equitable cannabis policy", she tweeted.

"And therefore we do not want to encourage in any way people to engage in that behaviour until the law is changed".

Under the new law, one Canadian household can grow up to four plants at home and one person can carry 30 grams of cannabis in public at the most. Medical marijuana is already legal in Canada. Instead of bouncing the bill back and forth like they could have, however, the Senate held a vote which passed 52 to 29 with two abstentions, putting Canada one step closer to a legalization date.

On pardons for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians with prior marijuana convictions, Trudeau said it would be "illogical" to consider the issue before the new law comes into effect. Trudeau's government is expected to decide a date that would legalize it in early or mid-September.

Canadians spent more than 5.7 billion Canadian dollars on marijuana in 2017, with the majority of it for recreational use, according to a Statistics Canada report released in January. Currently, nine states and Washington D.C. have legalized cannabis for adults in some form in The United States, but marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

Canadian Senator Tony Dean stated to reporters yesterday, "It ends 90 years of needless criminalisation, it ends a prohibition model that inhibited and discouraged public health and community health in favour of just-say-no approaches that simply failed young people miserably".

As a result, the attempts to legalize cannibas for recreational use have caused Canadian marijuana companies like Canopy Growth Corp., Aphria Inc., and Aurora Cannabis become the center of investor frenzy. It was said most of a year ago that legal sales would pop off in the beginning of July 2018 - right around Canada Day.

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