With clock ticking down to legalization, marijuana becomes a suburban affair

OTTAWA — Illegal pot sales are turning into a high earner for governments. Don Briere’s national chain of renegade retail shops remitted $688,449 in GST/HST collected from December to May on exploding sales of unlicensed marijuana, hashish and cannabis-laced edibles to relieve aches and pains. Briere remitted $286,452 more in federal payroll taxes and employer contributions to Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan for 2015. Then there’s personal income tax, corporate tax, store property taxes, workers’ compensation and more.

WASHINGTON — The smell near the Columbia Heights Metro station Wednesday night was unmistakable. A lit joint in hand, Tony Lee stood outside a residence talking with friends as the evening bustle passed them by, no one paying the group of men any special attention. “The community I’m in, everyone engages in smoking,” said Lee, 34, a District of Columbia resident who runs his own small construction firm. Plus, he said, if he’s not smoking, he detects the odor of other people getting high throughout the city on a daily basis anyway.

This post “In Pot We Trust”: Marijuana Experts Gather in D.C. appeared first on Daily Reckoning. Roll out the red carpet… Or maybe the green one instead! Because if you haven’t heard already, the “mother of all” pot conferences just wrapped up in our nation’s capital. It was a meeting of all the major players in the industry….

Licensed marijuana producers have dominated Canada’s medical marijuana industry, but a host of smaller brand-focused companies are waiting to disrupt the industry in the new era of recreational legalization. “We’re seeing the power shift from the farmers who grew the barley to the brands who make the beer,” Dooma Wendschuh, CEO of cannabis beverage startup Province Brands said on a panel at the O’Cannabiz conference in Toronto on Sunday.

Reuters/Blair GableAs voters go to the polls this November, at least four states will consider ballot questions on marijuana legalization. Pending proposals in Nevada, Maine and California would authorize recreational marijuana use, while Floridians will vote on whether to allow medical marijuana use.

Reuters/Mark BlinchMass raids of marijuana dispensaries across Toronto signals a turning point for pot activists who have been reading the tea leaves on who will be in, and who will be blocked, from Canada's highly anticipated legal weed regime.

Bob Erb has been playing the lottery since he was a young pothead in the 1970s, smoking 15 joints a day. Today, Mr. Erb is still crushing 15 joints a day — except now he’s smoking them as a multi-millionaire. The 60-year-old Terrace, B.C., farmer and grandfather won a $25-million jackpot last November and promptly began doling money out to friends, family, charity and hard luck cases. Perhaps the biggest recipient, however, has been a cause very close to his heart: the legalization of marijuana. Mr.