Torontoist » marijuana

Our Bad Habit When It Comes to Pot Laws

Included in the Tory crime bill now before the Senate: harsher penalties for marijuana possession which won't reduce interest in pot but could saddle even casual smokers with permanent legal records.

They have a statue on Parliament Hill for the person who turned pot smokers into criminals. It’s not far from the monument to Sir John A. Macdonald and the equestrian statue of the Queen. Emily Murphy was one of the Famous Five—the group of women who argued before the Supreme Court in 1927 that women [...]

Canada’s 11th-Hour 420

We’ve come a long way since summer 2003. Or have we? Sure, it was eight years ago. It was also not the best few months all around, what with SARS and everything, but the warmer months of that year did have an oddly hedonistic quality. Many were collectively drunk already on having thumbed our national [...]

Police Seize One Million Dollars’ Worth of Weed in Kensington Market

If things seem subdued in Kensington Market lately, chilly weather might not be the only cause. In a community bulletin issued earlier today (and not posted on the web) the Toronto Police Service announced that it had recently seized one million dollars in marijuana from an Augusta Avenue home. The seizure came during a three-week [...]

Cleaning Up Freedom’s Mess

Photo by Joel Charlebois/Torontoist. Each year, on the first Sunday in May, the Ontario Police Memorial Foundation holds its annual Ceremony of Remembrance, to honour officers killed in the line of duty. The Ceremony consists of a procession, to bagpipe music, south along Queen’s Park Crescent, to the lawn in front of the Provincial Legislature. [...]

Kindred Café’s Haze Clears for a New Maiden

Well this oughta satisfy those behind the complaints that prompted the police to raid 7 Breadalbane Street a year and a half ago: the location is reopening (again). But this time, it’s not a shit-disturbing, weed-wielding coffee shop. This time, with new owners, and a new name, it shall become a much more tame and [...]

Looking for Affordable Toronto Real Estate? Buy a Former Grow-op!

When asked about a potential viewing of the property at 32 Leyton Avenue, what surely must be one of the cheapest houses for sale in Toronto, realtor Peter Leung chuckled knowingly. “It’s not a regular house,” he warned, though Torontoist could tell from his tone that he suspected we already knew why. Still, he proceeded: [...]

Medical Green Makes Tories Blue

To a vast number of Canadians, the availability of medical cannabis to treat a range of ailments is a pharma-free blessing. To the federal government, today’s ruling against the Tories’ appeal to restrict that option is, put simply, a big damn buzzkill. While Canada’s status as a weed haven includes government-sanctioned grow ops, the government [...]

Train Derails, Soldier Bails, Barenaked Lady Fails

Omar Khadr’s lawyers recently released video footage of Khadr’s interrogation by CSIS agents in hopes that the video would embarrass the Prime Minister and garner sympathy from Canadians. Unsurprisingly, the PM’s office wasn’t hearing that noise. Clearly these lawyers don’t know how hard it is to embarrass Stephen Harper. Speaking of Canadians in trouble in [...]

Cops Caught With Crops, Peeing In Shops, Comic Gets Props

Two Toronto police officers, along with three correctional officers and a real estate agent among others, were arrested yesterday for producing and distributing marijuana during a takedown of 63 grow ops across the GTA. Torontoist has made a principled decision not to make jokes about police malfeasance, mainly because our real names are printed at [...]

Snappy Answers: In Which We Get a Little Blunt

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon. Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. Dear Snappy Answers, I moved here from the U.S. a little while ago. Down there, I would hear these stories about the lax marijuana laws here and the more lax enforcement of those laws. When I got here, I [...]

Real Guitar Heroes Don’t Smoke Weed

In what simultaneously has to be one of the most hilariously inspired and gut-wrenching punishments in the history of parental discipline, a local GTA father has set a new standard for puffing penalization. The man—an elementary school teacher known by the screen name "k_lid"—decided to sell his son’s Christmas present on eBay (a notoriously hard-to-find copy of the best-selling Guitar Hero 3 game) when he returned home from work early to find 15-year-old Isaac...

Grameen Bank Founder Wins Nobel Peace Prize, Tories’ Environmental Plan Fails To Impress, and It’s Snowing!

It is Friday the 13th! Wooooooooo! Auspicious time to begin new news column! Luckily we do not suffer from triskaidekaphobia, or we’d all be in trouble. Mohammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Yunus created the Grameen Bank on the theory that microcredit loans could be of great help in [...]