International updates from 🇨🇦 & 🇩🇪

 🇨🇦 ONTARIO
Province wants more cannabis shops

Driving the news: The Province of Ontario is proposing changes to its cannabis laws in an effort to combat the illicit market and regulate the industry more safely. 

What’s the biggest change?: In what should be music to some operator’s ears, the Province is proposing to double the number of cannabis shops an operator can own, from 75 to 150.

Ontario says this will combat the proliferation of illicit cannabis stores in Toronto and across the Province. 

What else?: The Province is also proposing to ban the cultivation of recreational cannabis in homes that offer childcare services, as well as exploring more enforcement mechanisms against illicit sellers.

🇩🇪 GERMANY
Deutschland is on the precipice of legalization

Driving the news: German lawmakers are moving, slowly but surely, toward legalizing cannabis.

Germany would join a handful of other countries, including Canada, Uruguay, and Thailand that have legalized federally.

Let’s back up: After a vote on the issue was postponed last week, lawmakers negotiated changes to the proposed legislation that would make it more palatable to advocates - and potentially easier to pass.

Some of the changes include increasing the possession limit for home growers, and letting “social clubs” where members can obtain cannabis open as early as July, among other changes.

Our take: Cannabis companies and investors are already circling the German market and the EU more generally.

But Germany’s vision of cannabis legalization is far different than Canada’s in 2018 - and perhaps, less friendly to big businesses, reports Sifted. 

Still, it’s an exciting time. Who wants to sponsor the Cultivated team’s trip to Berlin this summer? 

WHAT WE’RE READING
🥊 Quick hits

Can the hemp and weed every truly, really get along? Alex Halperin of WeedWeek reports.