#trudeau criminal monopoly

[mostlysignssomeportents]

KPMG audits the nursing homes it advises on how to beat audits

Tomorrow (May 10), I’m in VANCOUVER for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event for Red Team Blues at Heritage Hall and on Thurs (May 11), I’m in CALGARY for Wordfest.

Auditors are capitalism’s lubricants, who keep the gears of finance capital smoothly a-whirl, allowing investors to move their money in and out of companies without having to go pore over their books and walk through their facilities. Without auditors, the gears of capitalism would grind themselves to dust:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/ink-stained-wretches/#countless

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

Unfortunately for capitalism, auditing is irredeemably broken. The Big Four auditors (PWC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG) have merged to monopoly, becoming “too big to fail” and “too big to jail.” These four gigantic firms have spun up fantastically lucrative “consulting” divisions that advise companies on how to cheat on their audits and attain incredible (paper) gains. The work of these “consultants” is worth far more than the accounting and auditing jobs the companies do, and the weaker the audits are, the more profitable the consulting is:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#crooked-ref

This crisis has been a long time brewing. Back in 2001, the accounting/consulting giant Arthur Andersen was at the center of Enron’s fraud, which lit $11B in shareholder capital on fire. Enron had been making everyday people angry for years, engineering rolling blackouts and incredible energy-price gouging, but no one cares about working peoples’ complaints. By contrast, stealing $11B from rich people was something the authorities couldn’t ignore. They gave Andersen the death penalty, trying to teach the surviving accounting firms a lesson about what happens when you fuck with plutes.

But those other firms learned the wrong lesson: the collapse of Andersen was so disruptive that it soon became clear that the authorities would never take another giant consulting firm down, no matter how egregious its conduct was. They doubled down on crime, and then doubled down again.

It’s hard to pick a winner in the Big Four Accounting Firm Corruption Olympics, but KPMG is a strong contender, with a long history of just being monumentally inept and wrong. Back when Enron was unspooling, KPMG devoted itself to threatening people who linked to its website “without a license to do so”:

https://web.archive.org/web/20020207141547/http://chris.raettig.org/email/jnl00040.html

A couple years later, they declared war on wifi, trying to convince normies that wireless networks were an existential risk to human civilization:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2885339.stm

But there’s not much money in wifi scare stories or licenses to link. KPMG are good dialectical materialists, devoted to money over ideology, and boy did they figure out some wild ways to make money. For one thing, they figured out that they could get more accountants certified by cheating…on ethics exams:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-kpmg-cheating-scandal-was-much-more-widespread-than-originally-thought-2019-06-18

KPMG’s top managers bribed regulators to give them the answer-sheets for ethics exams. What did they bribe those public employees with? Jobs at KPMG:

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2020/01/how-accountants-took-washingtons-revolving-door-to-a-criminal-extreme

There’s hardly a month that goes by without another KPMG scandal somewhere in the world, with enormous monetary and social fallout. During the lockdowns, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government outsourced the creation and maintenance of ArriveCAN (a contact tracing app for people who entered Canada) to a grifter called GC Strategies, who billed millions for their services. GC Strategies didn’t do any work — instead, they paid KPMG $1,000-$1,500 day to hire freelancers to build the app. The app itself was a catastrophic failure, and that failure didn’t just embarrass the government — it also failed to protect Canadians during a once-in-a-century global pandemic. KPMG raked off a 30% commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

In the USA, KPMG helped Microsoft work up a radioactively illegal tax-evasion scheme. Microsoft poured the millions it saved by cheating on its taxes into dark-money operations that lobbied to defund the IRS so that KPMG and Microsoft could cook up even more illegal tax-evasion schemes:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

But KPMG doesn’t content itself with screwing over everyday people and rotting our democratic institutions — it also engages in the dangerous business of helping billionaires steal from millionaires. KPMG was the auditor that signed off on the scam “oil company” Miller Energy Partners, a fraud that operated for years thanks to KPMG’s rubber-stamp on its crooked books:

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

The company was run by serial fraudsters with long rapsheets for stealing millions. They staffed their C-suite with executives from disgraced companies that had been busted for running Ponzi schemes, issuing press releases praising those execs’ “proven track records in raising capital.” KPMG ignored every red flag, ignored the hundreds of millions in fraud on the books — and when the whole thing came crashing down, the responsible KPMG partner kept his job for years, until retiring with a full and fat pension.

More recently, KPMG made millions by confidently certifying the stability of a large regional bank, assuring investors and depositors that it was managing its risk and could be trusted. The name of the client that KPMG was so bullish on will be familiar to you: Silicon Valley Bank:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kpmg-faces-scrutiny-for-audits-of-svb-and-signature-bank-42dc49dd

KPMG epitomizes the idea of Too Big To Fail and Too Big to Jail. Despite being at the center of virtually every major finance scandal, it continues to thrive and grow. Remember the Carillion bust, in which billions went up in smoke and swathes of privatized government services vanished overnight? Not only did KPMG sign off on fraudulent Carillion books, but it escaped fines for doing so — and got paid to help administer Carillion’s bankruptcy:

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/uk-watchdog-fines-kpmg-24-mln-over-carillion-regenersis-audits-2022-07-25/

Despite this, KPMG continues to find willing buyers for its services. After all, when the sector is dominated by four giant, lavishly corrupt firms, there’s not much choice in the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/29/great-andersens-ghost/#mene-mene-bezzle

This is bad news for the investor class, of course, but it’s even worse news for the people who rely on the services that KPMG certifies, even as it helps grifters destroy them. Every kind of business relies on audits, from transit to aviation to day-care to eldercare.

Here’s a scary one for you: in Australia, the job of auditing residential eldercare homes’ compliance with safety and anti-abuse rules has been outsourced to KPMG. While KPMG earns a mid-sized fortune from these audits, it earns far more advising the owners of residential aged care homes on how to beat those audits:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/04/firm-performing-australian-aged-care-audit-also-charging-providers-for-expertise

KPMG says that the division that ensures the safety and dignity of elderly people is firewalled off from the division that advises companies on how to spend as little as possible on that safety and dignity — but KPMG also went to great lengths to keep the fact that it was selling services to both sides a secret.

Once the secret got out, an anonymous KPMG spokesmonster said, “When considering a request to perform an audit, we undertake a detailed process to ensure the engagement is free of conflicts.”

It’s hypothetically possible that this is true, but anyone who believes anything KPMG says is a sucker. The company’s rap-sheet goes back decades. This is, after all, a company that cheated on its ethics exams.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: Two business-suited male figures seen side on; each has a bomb for a head, and each is holding a lit lighter that has ignited the other's fuse. Each bomb is wearing a green accountant's eyeshade. In the background is a fiery mushroom cloud. They wear KPMG logos on their lapels.]

Image:

Vectorportal.com (modified) https://vectorportal.com/vector/business-deal-illustration/23215

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Inspired by an illustration by Matt Kenyon for the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/07184d86-81cf-11e2-b050-00144feabdc0

[americanmysticom]

“ONE OF THE GREATEST LESSONS OF THE PAST FIVE CENTURIES IN EUROPE AND AMERICA IS THIS: ACUTE CRISIS CONTRIBUTE TO BOOSTING THE POWER OF THE STATE.

IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE, AND THERE IS NO REASON WHY IT SHOULD BE DIFFERENT WITH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.”

Klaus Schwab is bringing you the great reset. And not only will it be great, it’ll be a fantastic reset! The folks at the World Economic Forum are busy helping protect you from climate change and disease.

Yet some people still ask, is Klaus Schwab the most dangerous man in the World? Get the full picture along with everything they DON’T want you to know in this video!

Is Klaus Schwab the Most Dangerous Man in the World? Awaken With JP Published  March 5, 2022

https://rumble.com/vwghvi-is-klaus-schwab-the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world.html

[ACUTE CRISIS ALSO PUTS THE SPOTLIGHT ON FASCIST DICTATORS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY]

[frostyreturns]

The Peoples Party of Canada recieved around a million votes in the last election. This is extremely noteworthy because they are a brand new political party, most new parties never get more than a couple thousand votes and it takes prominent alternative parties decades to gain that kind of support and any momentum at all. Not to mention the fact that this was accomplished despite the party being shunned and not included in any media coverage and not allowed at any debates despite polling higher than two of the parties who were including in debates. 

They were the only party running on a ticket of no lockdowns, no passports, no mandates among many other excellent liberty minded policies. It was also essentially a protest vote, there was no chance they were winning, most Canadians probably had no idea they even existed. A vote for them was a vote that said I don’t believe in this system. And they got around a million votes, for context Canada only has 25-30ish million people total. 

Now there are four or five right/liberty alternatives. This is how elections are rigged, ignoring them and banning them didn’t work as well as they would like they became worried about the tide turning against them so they are splitting the vote now as well. Oh and political leaders are being banned and kicked off social media in advance of election season as well. 

Voting changes nothing, voting will never solve the problem. Democracy is a sham they pick who they want to win and that person will be nothing but a puppet. By voting you are contributing to the delusion that you have a say. You are consenting to the results of a rigged system. I do not pretend to choose a leader because I do not recognize anyones authority to control my life and the country. I recognize Trudeau as nothing but the meat puppet of criminal and hostile regime. By attempting to vote him or any politician out you are legitimizing the scam and delaying what really needs to be done to remove the cancer. You’re playing by rules meant only to restrict you while your enemies do whatever they can possibly do to hold power. It’s like trying to win at monopoly playing someone who just steals without limit from the bank. 

No politician is coming to save you. The system is corrupt beyond repair, there is nothing in it that is worth salvaging. 

[beautiful-story]

Breaking Criminal Canadian Monopoly Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won't Back Down

WATCH 👀 SHARE 🇨🇦🇺🇲

[agreenroad]

Breaking: Criminal Canadian monopoly Dr. David Martin exposes why Trudeau won't back down

Breaking: Criminal Canadian monopoly Dr. David Martin exposes why Trudeau won’t back down

BREAKING: CRIMINAL CANADIAN MONOPOLY DR. DAVID MARTIN EXPOSES WHY TRUDEAU WON’T BACK DOWNhttps://www.bitchute.com/video/M4tQK6sSqV0A/Quote: “In an emergency broadcast, Dr. David Martin joined the Stew Peters Show on Friday to expose the real reason why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to negotiate with his constituents on the Canadian bioweapon mandates. Stew Peters stated that…

[sfwr]

Breaking: Criminal Canadian Monopoly Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won’t Back Down (Video) | Alternative | Before It's News

Breaking: Criminal Canadian Monopoly Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won’t Back Down (Video) | Alternative | Before It’s News

  by N.Morgan In an emergency broadcast, Dr. David Martin joined the Stew Peters Show to expose the real reason why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to negotiate with his constituents on the Canadian bioweapon mandates. Stew Peters stated that in April of 2020, Martin highlighted a quote from Canadian… — Read on…

[nothingman]

It’s the second country in the world to legalize pot, following Uruguay.

Canada has become the first wealthy nation in the world to fully legalize marijuana.

The Senate approved Bill C-45, also known as the Cannabis Act, on Tuesday. The measure was already approved by the House of Commons, so the Senate’s approval means it’s now set to become law.

The measure legalizes marijuana possession, home growing, and sales for adults. The federal government will oversee remaining criminal sanctions (for, say, selling to minors) and the licensing of producers, while provincial governments will manage sales, distribution, and related regulations — as such, provinces will be able to impose tougher rules, such as raising the minimum age. The statute largely follows recommendations made by a federal task force on marijuana legalization.

Canadian and provincial governments are expected to need two to three months before retail sales and other parts of the law can roll out.

None of this may seem too shocking in the US, where already nine states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and 29 states have allowed it for medicinal purposes. What sets Canada apart, though, is it’s doing this as a country. Previously, the South American nation of Uruguay was the only one that legally allowed marijuana for recreational purposes.

Canada, like the US, is part of international drug treaties that explicitly ban legalizing marijuana. Although activists have been pushing to change these treaties for years, they have failed so far — and that means Canada will be, in effect, in violation of international law in moving to legalize. (The US argues it’s still in accordance with the treaties because federal law still technically prohibits cannabis, even though some states have legalized it.)

For Canada’s ruling party, this fulfills a major campaign promise. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party was elected in 2015, one of the main promises he ran on was to legalize marijuana.

“We will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana,” the Liberal Party declared on its campaign website. “Canada’s current system of marijuana prohibition does not work. It does not prevent young people from using marijuana and too many Canadians end up with criminal records for possessing small amounts of the drug.”

But the process languished as Trudeau and his allies waited for a federal task force’s recommendations and as the Senate debated several provisions in the bill.

In moving forward, the Canadian government is now walking a fine line: It’s hoping to legalize marijuana to clamp down on the black market for cannabis and provide a safe outlet for adults, but it’s risking making pot more accessible to kids and people with drug use disorders. It is taking a bold step against outdated international drug laws, but it could upset countries like Russia, China, and even the US that have historically adopted a stricter view of the treaties. And while Canadian lawmakers may feel marijuana legalization is right for their country, there’s a risk that legal Canadian pot will spill over to the US — perhaps causing tensions with Canada’s neighbor and one of its closest allies.

Whether Canada is successful in its legalization attempts will depend on how it strikes a balance between these concerns. And depending on how it pulls this off, it may provide a model to other countries interested in legalization — including the US.

The risks and benefits of legalization

For Canada, marijuana legalization has been a balancing act from the start.

On one hand, marijuana prohibition has a lot of costs. In Canada, tens of thousands of people are arrested for marijuana offenses each year, ripping communities and families apart as people are thrown in jail or prison and gain criminal records. Enforcement of these laws also costs money, while legalizing and taxing marijuana could bring in extra revenue — although typically not that much, based on Colorado’s experience, where marijuana taxes make up less than 1 percent of the general budget.

The black market for marijuana fuels violence around the world — not only can it lead to conflicts and violence within Canada, but the money from illegally produced and sold pot often goes back to drug cartels that then use that money to carry out brutal violence, including murders, beheadings, kidnappings, and torture. Legalization shifts marijuana out of the illicit, potentially violent market toward a legal one that can produce legitimate jobs.

Legalization carries risks too. It could lead to more use and misuse by making pot cheaper and more available. Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at New York University’s Marron Institute, estimates that in the long term a legal marijuana joint will cost no more to make than, say, a tea bag — since both products come from plants that are fairly easy to grow. It would also be available to anyone (of legal age) in retail outlets after legalization — meaning it would no longer require a shady or secretive meeting with a drug dealer. Those are benefits for people who use marijuana without problems, to be sure, but easier access could also pose a risk for people who can’t control their cannabis consumption.

Although marijuana isn’t very dangerous compared to some drugs, it does carry some risks: dependence and overuse, accidents, nondeadly overdoses that lead to mental anguish and anxiety, and, in rare cases, psychotic episodes. Still, it’s never been definitively linked to any serious ailments — not deadly overdoses, lung disease, or schizophrenia. And it’s much less likely — around one-tenth so, based on data for fatal car crashes — to cause deadly accidents compared to alcohol, which is legal.

Among the risks, drug policy experts emphasize the risk of overuse and addiction. As Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, has told me, “At some level, we know that spending more than half of your waking hours intoxicated for years and years on end is not increasing the likelihood that you’ll win a Pulitzer Prize or discover the cure for cancer.”

A balancing act

To this end, Canada is striking a balance unlike that of the US’s legalization experiments so far.

So far in the US, the eight states that have legalized pot sales have done so with a model similar to alcohol. (Vermont has only legalized possession, not retail sales.) Basically, they’re setting up their systems to allow a for-profit pot industry to flourish, similar to the alcohol industry.

Drug policy experts, however, often point to the alcohol industry as a warning, not something to be admired and followed for other drugs. For decades, big alcohol has successfully lobbied lawmakers to block tax increases and regulations on alcohol, all while marketing its product as fun and sexy in television programs, such as the Super Bowl, that are viewed by millions of Americans, including children. Meanwhile, alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths each year in the US.

If marijuana companies are able to act like the tobacco and alcohol industries have in the past, there's a good chance they’ll convince more Americans to try or even regularly use marijuana, and some of the heaviest users may use more of the drug. And as these companies increase their profits, they’ll be able to influence lawmakers in a way that could stifle regulations or other policies that curtail cannabis misuse. All of that will likely prove bad for public health (although likely not as bad as alcohol, since alcohol is simply more dangerous).

There are policies that can curtail this, some of which Canada’s plan will allow.

For example, Canada’s measure restricts marketing and advertising. In the US, this is generally more difficult because the First Amendment protects commercial free speech. (Tobacco marketing is largely prohibited due to a massive legal settlement.) But in Canada, the restrictions could stop marijuana companies from marketing their product in a way that targets, say, children or people who already heavily use cannabis.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Caulkins previously told me. For public health purposes, “every serious researcher around the world thinks it’s a very good idea to restrict advertising of tobacco, alcohol, any dependence-inducing substance.”

Canada’s bill also lets provinces entirely handle the distribution and sales of marijuana — up to letting provincial governments directly manage and staff all pot stores by themselves. While state-run liquor stores aren’t unheard of in the US when it comes to alcohol, it’s widely seen as risky in America with marijuana: Since cannabis is illegal at the federal level, asking state employees to run marijuana shops would effectively ask them to violate federal law. But since Canada is legalizing marijuana nationwide in one go, it can do this — and several provinces are expected to take up this option.

The promise of government-run marijuana shops is that they could be better for public health. In short, government agencies that run shops are generally going to be more mindful of public health and safety, while private companies are only going to be interested in maximizing sales, even if that means making prices very low or selling to minors and people with drug use disorders. Previous research found that states that maintained a government-operated monopoly for alcohol kept prices higher, reduced youth access, and reduced overall levels of use — all benefits to public health.

Again, this is about balancing the risks and benefits of legalization: Maybe legalization is the better approach on net compared to prohibition, but that doesn’t mean that for-profit, private companies have to be given free rein over the market.

This isn’t important just to Canada. If Canada shows that these policies — and the many other quirks that will make it different to the US — are the right approach to legalization, it could provide a legalization model to the rest of the world that’s very different from what America has done so far.

Canada’s legalization bill could violate international treaties

From the 1960s through the ’80s, much of the world, including the US and Canada, signed on to three major international drug policy treaties: the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Drugs of 1971, and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988. Combined, the treaties require participants to limit and even prohibit the possession, use, trade, and distribution of drugs outside of medical and scientific purposes, and work together to stop international drug trafficking.

There is some debate about whether these treaties stop countries from decriminalizing marijuana — when criminal penalties are repealed but civil ones remain in place — and legalizing medical marijuana. But one thing the treaties are absolutely clear on is that illicit drugs aren’t to be allowed for recreational use and certainly not for recreational sales. Yet that’s exactly what Canada has now moved to allow.

Canada’s decision to legalize pot is the most high-profile rebuke of the international treaties since they were signed — since Canada is a relatively large developed country and is fairly active in the international arena.

In theory, Canada could face diplomatic backlash by legalizing pot. But it’s unclear who would lead such an effort, given that the US, the de facto enforcer of the treaties over the past few decades, is currently allowing states to legalize pot without federal interference.

There’s one way Canada could get around the treaty problem. In the early 2010s, Bolivia moved to allow coca leaf chewing, which was banned from the treaties. To get around this, the country effectively withdrew from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and then rejoined with a “reservation” allowing the use of coca leaves within its own borders. The move could have been blocked by one-third of the parties to the treaty — which would amount to more than 60 nations — but only 15 joined in opposition.

Canada could use a similar process — of withdrawing and then rejoining with a reservation for legal pot — to meet its treaty obligations.

It could also follow Uruguay, which has essentially refused to acknowledge that legalization violates the treaties. Despite warnings from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, no one has taken significant action against Uruguay for its decision.

As for the US, it claims to respect the drug treaties, despite some states’ move to legalize marijuana, with a clever argument: It’s true that multiple states have legalized pot, but the federal government still considers marijuana illegal, so the nation is still technically in line, even if a few states are not. Canada could not try this route if it legalizes nationwide.

If Canada pulls this off, it could provide a model for other countries to relax their drug laws — and particularly their marijuana laws — without violating international treaty obligations or, at the very least, without getting punished for disobeying the treaties.

Such a move would come at a very crucial time in international drug policy: After the UN’s special session on drugs in 2016, drug policy reformers are putting more pressure to reform the global drug control regime. Canadian legalization gives these reformers an opening by showing that if the treaties aren’t changed, they may soon be rendered meaningless as countries move ahead with their own reforms anyway — even if it puts them in violation of international drug law. And that could open up the rest of the world to legalizing pot.

It’s not just, then, that Canada is changing its own drug laws. Canada’s steps — from its rebuke of international drug treaties to how it will regulate cannabis — could affect the future of marijuana policy worldwide.

For more on marijuana legalization, read Vox’s explainer.

Correction: This article originally referenced provisions of the Canadian law that were very recently stripped out.

via Vox - All

[dippedanddripped]

LOS ANGELES — New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristof today published a sensationalistic call for state censorship and financial strangulation of adult tube site Pornhub, packaged around gut-punching testimonials from young victims of sexual exploitation.

What makes this particularly callous is that Kristof actually had the reporting to write a nuanced piece about the substantial problems with content moderation that plague all platforms that depend on third-party content, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, XVideos and — yes — Pornhub.

But that's not what Kristof and the editors of the New York Times chose to do, instead turning the piece into a manipulative attempt to insert themselves in the complex debates around Section 230 — the so-called First Amendment of the internet — free speech online and sexual expression among consenting adults, including pornography.

Everything about "The Children of Pornhub" is exploitative, from the testimonials, to the absolutely misguided photo essay taking advantage of a homeless teen to "make a point" and affect policy.

As of this writing, Kristof continues to tweet the victim's photo at public officials in the U.S. and Canada to manipulate them into "doing something" to Pornhub.

What Nicholas Kristof Got Right

These are some facts about Pornhub and the adult industry embedded in Kristof’s opinion piece:

Pornhub is very popular with all kinds of people. According to numbers cited by Kristof (who does not cite his sources) “it attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon” and “one ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world”

Pornhub is also a very successful business. Kristof notes (again without providing sources) that it derives income from “three billion ad impressions a day”

Pornhub, Kristof writes, “is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan”

Pornhub “is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults”

Pornhub’s very successful branding and marketing campaigns are built around removing the stigma from adult entertainment, bringing it out of “the darkness at the edge of town,” and deliberately aligning it with progressive and public welfare causes. In Kristof’s words, Pornhub “is the website that buys a billboard in Times Square and provides snow plows to clear Boston streets. It donates to organizations fighting for racial equality and offers steamy content free to get people through COVID-19 shutdowns”

Kristof admits the bold approach to branding and marketing worked. “Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence,” he writes. “One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon”

But Pornhub, while a big player in the adult tube site market, is not “a monopoly” or even the only company of its size in that space. “A rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors,” Kristof notes (again without providing sources)

Pornhub shares complex issues about content moderation with any major user-content reliant company both in mainstream and adult. “Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook,” Kristof writes. According to data he requested, “Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children”

Issues of moderation and filtering are also prevalent in search engines and are part of complex SEO problem-solving. Google, Kristof writes, “returns 920 million videos on a search for ‘young porn’”

Pornhub “has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children”

When Kristof asked Pornhub for a comment about some of the claims he and others make in his article, the company stated that “Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community”

Organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCOSE) track reports of child exploitation videos, which they can share with law enforcement and internet companies.

Pornhub has also worked with the “Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery.” The tube site company told Kristof through a statement that “eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront"

A Salacious, Explotative Call for Censorship

Armed with that information, Kristof then proceeds to bury it within a salacious, deliberately exploitative manifesto that confusingly asks for sweeping international censorship and private liability against a single private company — he explicitly directs his demands to the entire nation of Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the American “Congress and successive presidents” — while claiming that “it should be possible to be sex-positive and Pornhub-negative.”

Kristof’s call for politicians and states to step in and “do something” (i.e., effect censorship legislation directed towards one company, but affecting all of free speech online) also includes a number of tendencious misrepresentations, sensationalizing language and outright nonsense:

Pornhub, Kristof writes “is infested with rape videos”

These “rape videos” (which he repeatedly redefines in a very expansive way to include controversial search terms and fictional taboo content shot by consenting adults) are, he claims over and over, somehow a central part of Pornhub’s business model. Kristof’s favorite, vague, go-to word to explain the complex issue of how ad-based platforms make money in 2020 is “monetizes”

According to Kristof, “child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags” are all things Pornhub “monetizes.” It should be noted that the first three things Kristof mentions in his grab bag of “monetizeables” are recordings of illegal acts that should be (and usually are) reported to the authorities and to moderators, while “racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags,” if consensual, are protected by the First Amendment

Kristof claims that out of the 6.8 million new videos posted on Pornhub yearly, “many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence.” The “many” is tendentious here given that Kristof does not provide any concrete data of what percentage it is, how it compares to other adult or mainstream tube sites where bad actors may upload criminal content, or why he is singling out Pornhub for what appears to be an internet-wide issue for any company hosting massive amounts of third-party content

One of several creepy searches Kristof has performed as “research” for his censorship manifesto, yielded “more than 100,000 videos,” of which he says, apparently by his own viewing and estimation “most aren’t of children being assaulted but too many are”

Kristof protests that “the issue is not pornography but rape” and accuses Pornhub of “promoting” “assaults on children or on anyone without consent,” before likening the tube site to “Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein”

Kristof in his “research” claims that he “came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.” At no point in his article does Kristof clarify whether he reported theses videos to the authorities or the site’s moderators or if he followed up with the company’s response to such a report

Kristof repeatedly and almost universally refers to “women and girls” (presumably cis women) when reporting on the tube site’s content. There is only one mention of a pseudonymous male victim, which is near the end and almost in passing

Kristof repeatedly provides specific instructions and keywords on how to search for potentially criminal videos in the most graphic, exploitative terms, apparently inviting readers to replicate his “research.” Sample passage: “a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China." It is monetizing video compilations with titles like ‘Screaming Teen,’ ‘Degraded Teen’ and ‘Extreme Choking.’ Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for ‘She Can’t Breathe’”

“If you know what to look for, it’s possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes,” Kristof writes, again without giving any indication of what the process is to report the material to authorities and to the platform

Besides asking the governments of Canada and the U.S. to effect some form of state censorship, Kristof wants to make sure that Pornhub — and the multitude of sex workers who post their content there — cannot be part of the mainstream financial system and that its users are shadowbanned even further. “Call me a prude,” he writes, “but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa”

Echoing Religiously Inspired Anti-Porn Crusades

Kristof’s call for state censorship and defunding of Pornhub is identical to the current crusade being conducted by a well-funded, religiously inspired organization variously called Exodus Cry and Trafficking Hub, a California-based offshoot of controversial Midwestern ministry International House of Prayer (IHoP).

In fact, Kristof mentions the organization’s main mouthpiece in his tirade. “An organization called Traffickinghub [sic] led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down,” he writes.

Mickelwait, a single-minded zealot whose life mission is to get someone — anyone — to “shut down” Pornhub, looms large in the background of Kristof’s editorial, as does NCOSE (formerly known as Morality in Media), another well-funded, religiously inspired group which has been waging its own War on Porn since the 1960s.

NCOSE was responsible for the useless, wasteful copycat legislation passed in several Red State legislatures since 2016 attempting to define “porn as a public health crisis.” These performative bills attempted to divert resources from actual public health matters to “porn addiction” groups for training and other services. Since the actual COVID-19 public health crisis began, these efforts have become dormant, with funding by donors interested in the War on Porn being now repurposed for organizations like Exodus Cry and anti-Pornhub crusaders like Mickelwait.

Almost every piece of tendentious misinformation about Pornhub in Kristof’s piece, plus his attempt to influence mainstream financial services to stop doing business with the company, are straight from Mickelwait’s playbook, although Kristof does not disclose Exodus Cry’s very obvious influence on both his analysis and his proposed remedies.

By writing this deliberately manipulative piece, Kristof has essentially turned the New York Times into the Exodus Cry house organ, delivering its message to millions of readers, including influential politicians, judges, and opinion shapers.

Lawyers Are Circling

But it is not only moralists that stand to gain if Kristof’s arguments against Pornhub become mainstream. A few times in the piece he mentions another group of beneficiaries of this demonization campaign: lawyers salivating over a life-changing payday for themselves if Section 230 is kneecapped (as Trump, Biden and several Senators want) and platforms’ protections from liability for third-party content are lifted.

“Pornhub appears to be increasingly alarmed about civil or criminal liability,” Kristof gloats. “Lawyers are circling, and nine women sued the company in federal court after spy cam videos surfaced on Pornhub. The videos were shot in a locker room at Limestone College in South Carolina and showed women showering and changing clothes.”

Kristof, like other establishment Democrats like top Biden’s advisor Bruce Reed, wants to destroy Section 230 immunity for platforms in the name of “saving the children.” And like presumptive Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, Kristof is a huge fan of SESTA-FOSTA, the Section 230-weakening legislation conceived by right-wing religious politicians and embraced by liberal Democrats in the name of “fighting human trafficking.”

SESTA-FOSTA makes a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in Kristof’s piece, but he avoids using its now-infamous name.

“Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content,” Kristof writes. “But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better.”

“Limited Section 230” is Kristof’s euphemism for the devastation that SESTA-FOSTA brought to the lives of countless sex workers, who were never consulted about it, and for the irreparable harm it did to online Free Speech, as activists have pointed out.

This afternoon, Kristof tweeted: "Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, you have plenty on your plate. But in California, you were a leader in fighting human trafficking, and I hope that as VP you'll be a leader in tackling the surging exploitation of children on sites like Pornhub."

Also looming in the background of Kristof’s piece is the current bipartisan attempt to, in the words of Trump’s Twitterspeak, “REPEAL SECTION 230.” And, as he correctly points out as he cheers for vultures, lawyers are indeed “circling” to shake down Pornhub and other platforms.

One of the testimonials Kristof offers concerns a 19-year-old who questions Pornhub’s ability to keep track of people re-uploading videos depicting her as a minor, and has retained a lawyer. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma,” the victim told Kristof.

It's Not About Porn, It's About Content Moderation

If Kristof hadn’t quaffed the Exodus Cry kool-aid, he might have realized that a more responsible framing of the issues he brings up is the following: “It’s not about pornography, it’s about content moderation.” Section 230 was a 1996 compromise inserted by some far-seeing legislators into what was essentially a censorship bill, the Communications Decency Act, because of a vexing issue known as “the Moderator’s Dilemma.”

Before Section 230 was passed, the Moderator’s Dilemma — when applied to an unmanageable amount of data and content — trapped present and future platforms, such as Big Tech names Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pornhub, XVideos and others, in a limbo between not moderating at all (and allowing all kinds of criminal and harmful content to  be posted) and moderating imperfectly (and thus opening themselves to liability).

Section 230 is known as “the First Amendment of the internet” because it allowed — even encouraged — platforms to moderate themselves, in exchange for removing liability if the moderation was imperfect, as it was (and is) bound to be given the volume of information shared.

The issues Kristof brings up in his piece are constantly debated by legal scholars, politicians, business owners and commentators. But Kristof seems unaware of this voluminous, ongoing conversation. (You can tell he does his research on Wikipedia because he — with the apparent approval of the New York Times' fact-checkers — refers to “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.” There is no such thing. The CDA inserted Section 230 as a new numbered section in the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which it was meant to reform. And most of the CDA was later struck down as unconstitutional, precisely because of the free speech issues that Kristof gleefully ignores while asking that “something be done” about Pornhub, “for the children.”)

The NYT Exploiting At-Risk Teens

So what does Nicholas Kristof and his editors offer to back his half-baked contributions to the debates about Section 230, SESTA-FOSTA and content moderation?

The answer is as old as any call for censorship: emotional pornography.

Kristof weaves his “someone do something” outrage around 14 cases of individual victims who say they found criminal acts against them uploaded to the platform.

In a choice many would find revolting, the New York Times article “personalized” a complex tech and free speech issue by the inarguable power of gut-punching personal testimony.

This is a go-to for Kristof. Readers of his opinion pieces know that he has never found a victim of a sexual crime that he cannot “humanize” by going through their ordeal in exploitative detail.

But in this case he goes even further by finding a 19-year-old homeless woman from the Bay Area who, by his own account, is clearly in a precarious position in her life, both economically and emotionally, and identifies her by name and displays her image on a medium — the so-called "paper of record" — which will long outlive any adult tube site.

The story he retells concerns videos that the victim made for an older boy when she was 14.

“That’s when I started getting strange looks in school,” she told Kristof, who says the boy “shared the videos with other boys, and someone posted them on Pornhub.”

In Kristof’s telling, “[her] world imploded” through slut-shaming in school. “People were texting me, if I didn’t send them a video, they were going to send them to my mom,” she told him.

Although the videos were removed from Pornhub when her mother reported them, Kristof says they were re-uploaded online “to Pornhub and other websites.”

Kristof then somehow ties the teen’s suicide attempt, addiction to meth and opioids, dropping out of school and her current homelessness to the video — and to Pornhub.

After a period of underage sex work, Kristof reports the teen is “off drugs for a year but unemployed and traumatized, is living in her car in Bakersfield, along with three dogs that have proved more loyal and loving than the human species. She dreams of becoming a vet technician but isn’t sure how to get there.”

The article is illustrated with a questionable photo essay led by an image of the at-risk 19-year-old in a skintight shirt. The New York Times photo editors and Kristof are essentially deploying the same “barely legal” approach that the article appears to condemn. It’s one of the most blatant forms of 'pornsplotiation': the headline of Kristof’s piece is, for maximum effect, “The Children of Pornhub.”

More testimonials weave in-and-out of the piece, but it’s clear that Kristof does not care about each individual story as much as he cares about illustrating his — and Exodus Cry’s — monumental talking point: someone, somewhere should “do something” about Pornhub.

Each story is essentially the same tragic story: someone’s innocence was violated and recorded, the video was shared online (Kristof rarely specifies if the videos were also shared on YouTube, Facebook or any other large platform), and Pornhub has “monetized” and “profited” from it, allegedly as part of their “business model.”

You might miss it in passing, but several of the stories show that Pornhub’s reporting system actually worked, although the company admittedly has an issue with embedding signatures on videos to prevent re-uploads.

'Somebody' Must Do 'Something'

“So what’s the solution?” Kristof asks, immediately after sensationally ending the previous section with the murder of a victim.

First, Kristof says his campaign is not to shut down Pornhub, or online porn.

“Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions,” he writes, although his “research” appears to have largely consisted of incredibly creepy searches on Pornhub, interviewing victims, endorsing SESTA-FOSTA and Section 230 repeal, and memorizing whatever Exodus Cry/Trafficking Hub’s Leila Mickelwait told him.

You can watch Kristof’s censorship-craving mind try to wrap itself around the complex 1996 debates that resulted in Section 230: “if Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less-regulated countries,” he muses. “Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.”

Wait until he figures out "Moderator's Dilemma."

“More pressure and less impunity would help,” then he concludes, to his own satisfaction, before endorsing again “limiting Section 230 immunity” (i.e., SESTA-FOSTA) because it “leads to better self-policing.”

Finally, Kristof almost gives up: “I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.”

Ah, “increase moderation.”

Yes, Nicholas Kristof: you’ve finally arrived to the real issue, and what your headline should have been: “Large Tech Platforms Have a Serious Moderation Issue.”

Clearly, the New York Times and Kristof thought that headline wasn't as "sexy" as "The Children of Pornhub" and a picture of an at-risk teen.

And anyone in the — still legal — adult industry can tell you that's just plain wrong.

[picardonhealth]

Canada needs to clear the air – and wipe away criminal records for marijuana

The war on drugs has failed miserably, and as legalization approaches, the federal government’s new rules should retroactively give a blank slate to those needlessly prosecuted in the past

André Picard, The Globe and Mail 

Friday, June 29, 2018

From the archives: This article was originally published January 15, 2018

Legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada is only a few months away, but it's going to take a lot longer than that to clean up the mess left behind from almost a century of prohibition. One of the most pressing issues has to be to wipe the slate clean for Canadians who have criminal records for possession.

When Bill C-45 (the Cannabis Act) was tabled, the government said there would be no general amnesty for past convictions. But now it seems the Liberals are starting to come to their senses – at least a bit.

At a cabinet retreat last week in London, Ont., federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the government is examining the implications of possible pardons or record suspensions, but no action would be taken until after July 1.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for his part, acknowledged that a lot of people have been harmed by having criminal records for possession of a drug that will soon be legal. But, in the same breath, he said that people will continue to be prosecuted for possession of marijuana until a "legalized and controlled regime is in place – not before."

Mr. Trudeau's dubious justification for this hardline approach is that "anyone who is currently purchasing marijuana is participating in illegal activity that is funding criminal organizations and street gangs."

The PM needs to be reminded that one of the principal reasons legalization makes sense is having a criminal record is a lot worse for a person's health than smoking pot. It can make finding a job, getting a bank loan and travelling much more difficult, not to mention that prosecuting people for buying a few grams of pot to get high is a tremendous waste of police and court resources.

For decades now, tens of thousands of people a year have been busted for possession. Racialized and low-income Canadians have been disproportionately prosecuted and harmed.

In 2016 alone – after it was clear that cannabis would be legalized – there were 55,000 cannabis-related charged laid under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act – 76 per cent of them for simple possession – according to Statistics Canada. That number has been falling for years as police and prosecutors began to recognize the absurdity of the law. Judges have also increasingly imposed suspended sentences and small fines.

In other jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis, such as California, they simply removed the crime of possession from the books – and did so retroactively. They also reduced penalties for cultivating and selling cannabis.

Canada is taking a much more convoluted and outdated approach. Under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, there are currently eight cannabis-related offences, such as possession, trafficking, importing and exporting. Under the Cannabis Act, there will be 45 offences, and many penalties will be far stiffer.

Under the new law, it will be legal for individuals to possess up to 30 grams (one ounce) of cannabis and grow up to four plants for personal consumption. (Those rules, however, vary a bit by province.)

Cannabis will be highly regulated; the new legal regime does not create a laissez-faire environment. For example, public possession of more than 30 grams of pot will be a crime, as will "unauthorized promotion."

The new law will also create something called "illicit cannabis" – covering all products that are not purchased in a provincially-regulated store, or grown legally. If you distribute "illicit cannabis" to a minor, i.e. share a joint with a teenager or sell them a bit of pot, you could face a $15,000 fine and 18 months in prison for a summary offence and up to 14 years in prison for an indictable offence.

By comparison, selling liquor to a minor will land you a maximum fine of $10,000 in most provinces.

Selling cannabis without a licence will also be a crime with stiff penalties – up to 14 years in prison – which could prove problematic for dispensaries in provinces that are creating a state-run monopoly, such as Ontario and Quebec. Ontario, which has vowed to shut down dispensaries, has also threatened additional fines of up to $1-million.

In the U.S. jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana – six states and three more coming in 2018 – criminal charges have dropped sharply. But, in Canada, that's not a given, and that's most unfortunate. Ottawa needs to not only expunge the records of those who have been charged with possession in the past, but ensure it does not perpetuate the morally and rationally-untenable litany of prosecutions of recreational drug users that are the hallmark of the failed war on drugs.

[deniscollins]

Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal

Canada had a $7 billion a year black market for marijuana and legalized recreational marijuana use. Should the United States legalize marijuana at the federal level: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalize recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks.

The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”

Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.

But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.

People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalization of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture in decades.

Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a vibrant black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalization was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect on Oct. 17, Mr. Trudeau said  Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.

But proponents of marijuana legalization may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.

Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, “The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide,” predicted that veteran consumers would come around.

“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,’’ he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”

The Quebec Cannabis Company, the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorizing it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.

Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.

At the official stores, one gram will cost about $6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.

While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.

Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.

The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.

“We’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” said Nathan Murdock, the store manager.

The store presents resents itself as if it were a medical dispensary. There is a green cross on a signboard on the street outside and a note on the door that warns buyers that they need to show an ID, as they would at an authorized dispensary.

But it is just a pretense. Inside, the staff serves a continual line of shoppers from behind a glass counter, sorting through their orders wearing latex gloves.

Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eartha Masek-Kelly, a 21-year-old musician, bought a quarter of an ounce of Green House Ocean Grown Kush from the counter as she had done every other day for the past year to calm her anxiety and depression.

“Why put resources into shutting down independent retailers that are just helping people?” she asked.

In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down. But as quickly as some illegal stores have been shut down, others have opened up.

Staff Sgt. Lesley Hildred of the Toronto Police said officers took the door off one of the closed dispensaries to ensure that it could not reopen quickly. “It takes a lot of police hours,” the sergeant said. “We can’t be there enforcing the law all the time. I have other things to do.”

Mr. Peloquin said that some legal medical marijuana growers had been selling their surplus crop to illegal sites that peddle marijuana online.

“There is a massive gray market already and the police know it exists,’’ he said. “But if they arrest someone and a person shows they are a designated producer, it is hard to prove criminal intent. So it is very hard to clamp down on this.”

Gérard Deltell, an opposition Conservative member of the federal Parliament from Quebec City, argued that the government had rushed to legalize marijuana before law enforcement in some provinces were ready. He predicted that organized crime would continue to hold sway.

“It is shocking that the Canadian government wants to become the pot dealer for the nation,” he said.

Mr. Letendre, the retired radio host, offered perhaps the most dire vision of what legalization might produce. “Young people from all over the world will come to smoke weed in Montreal, and we will soon become a country of potheads,” he said as he rode his electric scooter through downtown Montreal.

But other people, especially ones, view legalization as an enormous business prospect.

Mr. Rossant, 21, the recent university graduate, is starting a marijuana lifestyle magazine called Maples. He also wants to produce a variety of maple-derived, marijuana-infused products, and he is hoping that the law will be liberalized as demand grows.

“For a young entrepreneur like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector,” he said. “Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot-market — we have all smoked pot.”

[americanmysticom]

EPISODE 256: THE WORLD HEALTH ORDER [THE NEW WORLD ORDER POWER ASSERTION TO RESET TO A GLOBAL POWER CURRENCY]

Trudeau, Putin, Schwab, and The World Health Order; Surprise! CDC Hiding Data; Ex-BlackRock Manager Exposes Global Cover Up; Convoy Organizer’s Message to Biden & The World

Guests: Alexandra Lavoie, Edward Dowd, Kyle Sefcik

https://thehighwire.com/videos/episode-256-the-world-health-order/

[Del attempts to make sense of psychosis as the threshing floor separates chaff and seed]

[newssplashy]

World: Canadians brace for cultural changes as marijuana becomes legal

MONTREAL — For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalize recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks.

The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”

Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.

But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.

People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalization of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture since the end of Prohibition.

Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalization was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect Oct. 17, Trudeau said Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.

But proponents of marijuana legalization may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.

Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, “The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide,” predicted that veteran consumers would come around.

“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,” he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides, and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”

The Quebec Cannabis Co., the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorizing it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.

Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.

At the official stores, one gram will cost about $6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.

While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke, ingest and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.

Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.

The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.

“We’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” said Nathan Murdock, the store manager.

The store presents itself as if it were a medical dispensary. There is a green cross on a signboard on the street outside and a note on the door that warns buyers that they need to show an ID, as they would at an authorized dispensary.

But it is just a pretense. Inside, the staff serves a continual line of shoppers from behind a glass counter, sorting through their orders wearing latex gloves.

Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eartha Masek-Kelly, a 21-year-old musician, bought a quarter of an ounce of Green House Ocean Grown Kush from the counter as she had done every other day for the past year to calm her anxiety and depression.

“Why put resources into shutting down independent retailers that are just helping people?” she asked.

In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down. But as quickly as some illegal stores have been shut down, others have opened up.

Staff Sgt. Lesley Hildred of the Toronto Police said officers took the door off one of the closed dispensaries to ensure that it could not reopen quickly. “It takes a lot of police hours,” the sergeant said. “We can’t be there enforcing the law all the time. I have other things to do.”

Peloquin said that some legal medical marijuana growers had been selling their surplus crop to illegal sites that peddle marijuana online.

“There is a massive gray market already, and the police know it exists,” he said. “But if they arrest someone and a person shows they are a designated producer, it is hard to prove criminal intent. So it is very hard to clamp down on this.”

Gérard Deltell, an opposition Conservative member of the federal Parliament from Quebec City, argued that the government had rushed to legalize marijuana before law enforcement in some provinces were ready. He predicted that organized crime would continue to hold sway.

“It is shocking that the Canadian government wants to become the pot dealer for the nation,” he said.

Letendre, the retired radio host, offered perhaps the most dire vision of what legalization might produce. “Young people from all over the world will come to smoke weed in Montreal, and we will soon become a country of potheads,” he said as he rode his electric scooter through downtown Montreal.

But other people view legalization as an enormous business prospect.

Rossant, 21, the recent university graduate, is starting a marijuana lifestyle magazine called Maples. He also wants to produce a variety of maple-derived, marijuana-infused products, and he is hoping that the law will be liberalized as demand grows.

“For a young entrepreneur like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector,” he said. “Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot-market — we have all smoked pot.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Dan Bilefsky and Catherine Porter © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/06/world-canadians-brace-for-cultural_21.html

[cleopatrarps]

Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal

MONTREAL — For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalize recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks.

The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”

Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.

But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.

People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalization of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture since the end of Prohibition.

Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a vibrant black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalization was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect on Oct. 17, Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.

But proponents of marijuana legalization may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.

Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, “The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide,” predicted that veteran consumers would come around.

“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,’’ he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”

The Quebec Cannabis Company, the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorizing it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.

Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.

At the official stores, one gram will cost about $6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.

While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.

Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.

The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.

“We’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” said Nathan Murdock, the store manager.

The store presents resents itself as if it were a medical dispensary. There is a green cross on a signboard on the street outside and a note on the door that warns buyers that they need to show an ID, as they would at an authorized dispensary.

But it is just a pretense. Inside, the staff serves a continual line of shoppers from behind a glass counter, sorting through their orders wearing latex gloves.

Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eartha Masek-Kelly, a 21-year-old musician, bought a quarter of an ounce of Green House Ocean Grown Kush from the counter as she had done every other day for the past year to calm her anxiety and depression.

“Why put resources into shutting down independent retailers that are just helping people?” she asked.

In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down. But as quickly as some illegal stores have been shut down, others have opened up.

Staff Sgt. Lesley Hildred of the Toronto Police said officers took the door off one of the closed dispensaries to ensure that it could not reopen quickly. “It takes a lot of police hours,” the sergeant said. “We can’t be there enforcing the law all the time. I have other things to do.”

Mr. Peloquin said that some legal medical marijuana growers had been selling their surplus crop to illegal sites that peddle marijuana online.

“There is a massive gray market already and the police know it exists,’’ he said. “But if they arrest someone and a person shows they are a designated producer, it is hard to prove criminal intent. So it is very hard to clamp down on this.”

Gérard Deltell, an opposition Conservative member of the federal Parliament from Quebec City, argued that the government had rushed to legalize marijuana before law enforcement in some provinces were ready. He predicted that organized crime would continue to hold sway.

“It is shocking that the Canadian government wants to become the pot dealer for the nation,” he said.

Mr. Letendre, the retired radio host, offered perhaps the most dire vision of what legalization might produce. “Young people from all over the world will come to smoke weed in Montreal, and we will soon become a country of potheads,” he said as he rode his electric scooter through downtown Montreal.

But other people, especially ones, view legalization as an enormous business prospect.

Mr. Rossant, 21, the recent university graduate, is starting a marijuana lifestyle magazine called Maples. He also wants to produce a variety of maple-derived, marijuana-infused products, and he is hoping that the law will be liberalized as demand grows.

“For a young entrepreneur like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector,” he said. “Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot-market — we have all smoked pot.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Montreal, and Catherine Porter from Toronto. Jasmin Lavoie and Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2thVzWI via News of World

[dani-qrt]

Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal

MONTREAL — For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalize recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks.

The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”

Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.

But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.

People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalization of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture since the end of Prohibition.

Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a vibrant black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalization was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect on Oct. 17, Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.

But proponents of marijuana legalization may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.

Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, “The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide,” predicted that veteran consumers would come around.

“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,’’ he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”

The Quebec Cannabis Company, the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorizing it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.

Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.

At the official stores, one gram will cost about $6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.

While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.

Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.

The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.

“We’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” said Nathan Murdock, the store manager.

The store presents resents itself as if it were a medical dispensary. There is a green cross on a signboard on the street outside and a note on the door that warns buyers that they need to show an ID, as they would at an authorized dispensary.

But it is just a pretense. Inside, the staff serves a continual line of shoppers from behind a glass counter, sorting through their orders wearing latex gloves.

Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eartha Masek-Kelly, a 21-year-old musician, bought a quarter of an ounce of Green House Ocean Grown Kush from the counter as she had done every other day for the past year to calm her anxiety and depression.

“Why put resources into shutting down independent retailers that are just helping people?” she asked.

In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down. But as quickly as some illegal stores have been shut down, others have opened up.

Staff Sgt. Lesley Hildred of the Toronto Police said officers took the door off one of the closed dispensaries to ensure that it could not reopen quickly. “It takes a lot of police hours,” the sergeant said. “We can’t be there enforcing the law all the time. I have other things to do.”

Mr. Peloquin said that some legal medical marijuana growers had been selling their surplus crop to illegal sites that peddle marijuana online.

“There is a massive gray market already and the police know it exists,’’ he said. “But if they arrest someone and a person shows they are a designated producer, it is hard to prove criminal intent. So it is very hard to clamp down on this.”

Gérard Deltell, an opposition Conservative member of the federal Parliament from Quebec City, argued that the government had rushed to legalize marijuana before law enforcement in some provinces were ready. He predicted that organized crime would continue to hold sway.

“It is shocking that the Canadian government wants to become the pot dealer for the nation,” he said.

Mr. Letendre, the retired radio host, offered perhaps the most dire vision of what legalization might produce. “Young people from all over the world will come to smoke weed in Montreal, and we will soon become a country of potheads,” he said as he rode his electric scooter through downtown Montreal.

But other people, especially ones, view legalization as an enormous business prospect.

Mr. Rossant, 21, the recent university graduate, is starting a marijuana lifestyle magazine called Maples. He also wants to produce a variety of maple-derived, marijuana-infused products, and he is hoping that the law will be liberalized as demand grows.

“For a young entrepreneur like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector,” he said. “Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot-market — we have all smoked pot.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Montreal, and Catherine Porter from Toronto. Jasmin Lavoie and Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2thVzWI via Online News

[newestbalance]

Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal

MONTREAL — For one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis companies, the vote in Parliament this week to legalize recreational marijuana use represents a broad opportunity to develop new products, including marijuana infused drinks.

The hope, said Adam Greenblatt, a manager with the company, Canopy Growth, “is that in five years time people will be drinking cannabis drinks at a cocktail party as if drinking a good wine.”

Matteo Rossant, 21, a business graduate at Concordia University in Montreal, also envisions an expansive future, one in which he sells maple syrup, lollipops and jelly treats made with cannabis.

But Rémi Letendre, 81, a retired Quebec radio host, worries that legal marijuana sales and consumption will leave cities like Toronto and Montreal overrun by stoned adolescents and marijuana tourists from the United States stumbling around the sidewalks.

People across Canada were grappling on Wednesday with the legalization of recreational marijuana, which represents one of the most sweeping changes in Canadian culture since the end of Prohibition.

Many questions remain, including whether law enforcement will be able to tame a vibrant black market for cannabis that has been thriving in the shadows and whether consumers will reject smoking government-approved joints.

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had argued that legalization was necessary to eliminate an illegal cannabis industry estimated to be worth as much as $7 billion a year and to protect young people from the risks of illegal drugs. The law will go into effect on Oct. 17, Mr. Trudeau said Wednesday, to give provinces time to get their retail systems running.

But proponents of marijuana legalization may face an unlikely challenge: customers who worry that government-approved products will take some of the thrill out of pot smoking.

Tristan Peloquin, a Montreal-based author of a soon-to-be-published book, “The Little Green Book of Cannabis: A Survival Guide,” predicted that veteran consumers would come around.

“Smoking pot has long been a rebellious anti-government activity,’’ he said, “but some of the illegal stuff has pesticides and pot smokers will ultimately want better quality pot.”

The Quebec Cannabis Company, the new provincial marijuana monopoly, has been examining how to sell cannabis, given restrictions that, for example, forbid glamorizing it in marketing or selling it in glass display cases behind a counter.

Mathieu Gaudreault, a spokesman for the company, said customers might be able to at least smell the marijuana, which will be sold in sealed sachets, “as if they were smelling perfume.” Customers will be asked for identification at the entrance to retail stores to prove that they are at least 18 years old, the legal age for buying alcohol and cannabis in Quebec.

At the official stores, one gram will cost about $6; other products will be offered, both at stores and online, with different degrees of potency.

While Canadians will soon be allowed to smoke and sell marijuana with impunity for the first time in 95 years, hundreds of illegal dispensaries have already popped up across the country, underlining the challenges the government and law enforcement will face.

Trees Station, one of many illegal pot dispensaries in Toronto’s bohemian Kensington Market, has been open for two years, selling more than 30 different kinds of marijuana, with names like Pink Cinderella and Organic Charlotte’s Web.

The drug is offered in capsules and extract form, too. Customers can buy THC lip balm and a canine calming cannabis powder called Calm and Quiet. Business is so good, the owners have no intention of shutting down when the new law goes into effect in October. Instead, they have plans to open two new sites.

“We’re going to keep on doing what we’re doing,” said Nathan Murdock, the store manager.

The store presents resents itself as if it were a medical dispensary. There is a green cross on a signboard on the street outside and a note on the door that warns buyers that they need to show an ID, as they would at an authorized dispensary.

But it is just a pretense. Inside, the staff serves a continual line of shoppers from behind a glass counter, sorting through their orders wearing latex gloves.

Although Canada legalized medical marijuana in 2001, and today patients must order marijuana by mail from producers licensed by the government, hundreds of black market dispensaries have proliferated.

On Wednesday afternoon, Eartha Masek-Kelly, a 21-year-old musician, bought a quarter of an ounce of Green House Ocean Grown Kush from the counter as she had done every other day for the past year to calm her anxiety and depression.

“Why put resources into shutting down independent retailers that are just helping people?” she asked.

In effort to rein in illegal dispensaries, Ontario has passed tough laws allowing the police to shut them down. But as quickly as some illegal stores have been shut down, others have opened up.

Staff Sgt. Lesley Hildred of the Toronto Police said officers took the door off one of the closed dispensaries to ensure that it could not reopen quickly. “It takes a lot of police hours,” the sergeant said. “We can’t be there enforcing the law all the time. I have other things to do.”

Mr. Peloquin said that some legal medical marijuana growers had been selling their surplus crop to illegal sites that peddle marijuana online.

“There is a massive gray market already and the police know it exists,’’ he said. “But if they arrest someone and a person shows they are a designated producer, it is hard to prove criminal intent. So it is very hard to clamp down on this.”

Gérard Deltell, an opposition Conservative member of the federal Parliament from Quebec City, argued that the government had rushed to legalize marijuana before law enforcement in some provinces were ready. He predicted that organized crime would continue to hold sway.

“It is shocking that the Canadian government wants to become the pot dealer for the nation,” he said.

Mr. Letendre, the retired radio host, offered perhaps the most dire vision of what legalization might produce. “Young people from all over the world will come to smoke weed in Montreal, and we will soon become a country of potheads,” he said as he rode his electric scooter through downtown Montreal.

But other people, especially ones, view legalization as an enormous business prospect.

Mr. Rossant, 21, the recent university graduate, is starting a marijuana lifestyle magazine called Maples. He also wants to produce a variety of maple-derived, marijuana-infused products, and he is hoping that the law will be liberalized as demand grows.

“For a young entrepreneur like me, the pot industry feels easier to get into than the tech sector,” he said. “Besides, we millennials have the know-how when it comes to the pot-market — we have all smoked pot.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from Montreal, and Catherine Porter from Toronto. Jasmin Lavoie and Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Canadians Brace for Cultural Changes as Marijuana Becomes Legal appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2thVzWI via Everyday News

[sfwr]

Breaking: Criminal Canadian Monopoly Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won’t Back Down (Video) | Alternative | Before It's News

Breaking: Criminal Canadian Monopoly Dr. David Martin Exposes Why Trudeau Won’t Back Down (Video) | Alternative | Before It’s News

  by N.Morgan In an emergency broadcast, Dr. David Martin joined the Stew Peters Show to expose the real reason why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to negotiate with his constituents on the Canadian bioweapon mandates. Stew Peters stated that in April of 2020, Martin highlighted a quote from Canadian… — Read on…