The Ontario government will announce Friday that it will create a cannabis control board and open up to 60 storefronts to manage the sale and distribution of marijuana in the province, CBC News has learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The plans include restricting marijuana sales to those 19 and older, a year above\u00a0the minimum age recommended by the federal government’s\u00a0cannabis task force report in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 30 to 60 stores selling marijuana to the public will not be housed inside existing LCBO stores as Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne\u00a0had previously suggested.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Illegal pot shops in Ontario would be shut down over the next 12 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In April, legislation was introduced in the House of Commons to legalize and regulate the sale and distribution of marijuana on or before July 1, 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the decisions about how the drug will be sold\u00a0and taxed are being left\u00a0to the provinces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a premiers meeting in Edmonton in July, the premiers announced they would ask the federal government to postpone legalization if\u00a0issues related to road safety, taxation, training for distributors and public education are not addressed.<\/p>\n
The premiers said they would report back on progress by\u00a0Nov. 1\u00a0and would seek such an\u00a0extension if the\u00a0federal timetable was deemed “unrealistic.”<\/p>\n
“The starting point is, have we met the public safety concerns, are we sure we have the provisions in place to protect youth, do we understand what the highway traffic implications are?” Wynne said at the time. “It’s those issues that we have to resolve because we have to keep people safe.”<\/p>\n
Shortly after the premiers’\u00a0announcement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u00a0said his government intends to stick to the July\u00a02018 deadline.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/ontario-to-create-cannabis-control-board-1.4280073?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ontario government will announce Friday that it will create a cannabis control board and open up to 60 storefronts to manage the sale and distribution of marijuana in the province, CBC News has learned.\u00a0 The plans include restricting marijuana sales to those 19 and older, a year above\u00a0the minimum age recommended by the federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-90176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}