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Part of the industry – involving medical marijuana – has been legal in Canada for more than a decade but has been undergoing a profound shift since April 1, 2014. That’s when rules were changed in favour of industrial-scale suppliers and away from homegrown operations.

Alongside the legal medical regime is the much larger black market involving the sale of recreational marijuana. This multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry is Trudeau’s main target.

The Liberal party’s rationale for legalizing its products is straightforward. “Canada’s current system of marijuana prohibition does not work,” the policy reads. “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 shifting hundreds of thousands of marijuana users from illegal sources of supply to legitimate ones will involve a series of difficult choices, not least of which are: who should be allowed to produce it, how should recreational pot be sold, and where can it be consumed. The best bet for now, according to industry insiders,is that the major source of supply will come from today’s medical marijuana producers, who will continue to sell directly to patients while recreational strains will be sold through retail outlets, akin to liquor control outlets or Beer Stores.

This still leaves open the question of who would own these outlets.

Chuck Rifici, a director of Aurora Cannabis of Alberta (and chief financial officer of the Liberal Party of Canada) notes medical marijuana producers might very well get into the retailing game. “The only difference between medical and recreational marijuana is how it’s sold,” he says. “Licensed producers would love to own a retail component.”