Canada soon to legalize marijuana for recreational use

Posted by Sagar Satapathy on June 14, 2016.

The leaders of Canada may allow the use of recreational marijuana across the country as soon as 2017, Los Angeles Times reports. If the use of marijuana for recreational is being legalized, Canadian citizens could be buying marijuana from every pharmacy and liquor store in the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana, and his government plans to get started next spring.  Last April, Health Minister Jane Philpott said before a U.N. General Assembly that the country would introduce legislation in the spring to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana.

Marijuana is a $4.3-billion industry in the U.S. But in Canada, it generates no more than $150 million in medical marijuana sales. The new legislation could create an exponential amount of trade routes between Canada and the United States when compared to the current medical marijuana market.

It is also estimated that more numbers of US citizens particularly from northern states would visit to Canada for recreational marijuana, which would help the later to generate more revenues.

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.

The new legislation would likely set local marijuana growers and distributors free from the risks that come with the marijuana trade, including being prohibited from partnering with big investors or opening a bank account in the country.

Canada has already legalized the use of medical marijuana in 2001.

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