Content Courtesy of: mashable.com
Written by: Adam Rosenberg
Just over a year ago, the adaptation of Stephen King's It shook horror fandom with a $123.4 million opening weekend — the highest ever for a horror movie. Now Halloween is here to join the party.
The 40-years-later sequel that opened on Friday picked up an estimated $77.5 million in the U.S. during its opening weekend. That's not quite It levels of success, but it's more than enough to make Halloween's first three days the second highest for an R-rated horror movie.
In an amusing twist, Halloween's ascendance to that #2 spot effectively unseats the previous box office runner-up, The Nun, which opened in September just a day before the one-year anniversary of It's release. Horror, in case you haven't noticed, is very "in" right now.
Halloween also fell shy of breaking another record: Top October box office of all time.
Prior to 2018, that distinction went to Gravity, the Sandra Bullock-starring outer space thriller that opened with $55.8 million. It was Venom that swooped in earlier this October to set a new record, with an $80.3 million opening. Just ahead of Halloween.
It was nonetheless a great start for the sequel, which brings back Jamie Lee Curtis, star of the original, for a modern-day face-off with Michael Myers. Halloween is, by most accounts, a great movie — horror or otherwise — and one that smartly uses humor to offset the big scare moments.
WATCH: Nightmares Fear Factory continues to serve us amazing haunted-house reaction photos
Hot Audiobooks
These Are The Buzziest Audiobooks Of The Season
Content Courtesy of: buzzfeednews.com
Written by: Arianna Rebolini
In All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung, who is Korean, confronts her experience of having been adopted by white parents, coming to terms with the ways in which she resents her alienation from a huge part of who she is — in a family that “othered” her despite their love and best intentions, and in a community that did the same, though often cruelly. When she gets pregnant, she decides it’s time to find her biological parents, and in the process she discovers an entire family. All You Can Ever Know is the messy navigation of Chung’s new reality — her working out the boundaries of these people who are both kin and strangers, her careful confrontation and reconciliation with her parents, and her exploration of the profound, ever-shifting meaning of family.
An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris, narrated by Eva Kaminsky
The first in a new trilogy from the author of the beloved Sookie Stackhouse series, An Easy Death exists in an alternate universe in which magic is real — and incredibly dangerous. The US has collapsed and been split up among the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. In one of the southwestern states called Texoma, deadly gunfighter and free agent Lizbeth Rose is confronted by two Russian sorcerers who are certain she can help them find a distant relative who might be the key to saving their exiled emperor. Unfortunately, there are plenty of sorcerers — and their own hired muscle — who are trying to stop them.
Beautiful Country Burn Again by Ben Fountain, narrated by Ron Butler
Ben Fountain’s essay collection encapsulates the political climate of 2016, narrating the year’s most surreal and influential events — the Iowa Caucus, the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the election itself and its aftershocks — and contextualizing them by probing into watershed moments of our nation’s past — moments that led to significant rebirth. Specifically, Fountain points to the Civil War and the Great Depression as formative existential crises. He argues that we face a third now, and that our next steps are crucial.
Heartland by Sarah Smarsh, narrated by Sarah Smarsh
Sarah Smarsh’s Kansas roots go back five generations. Her father and his family were wheat farmers, and her mother, like many of the women who came before her, got pregnant with Sarah when she was a teen. Smarsh’s memoir Heartland is a poignant look at growing up in a town 30 miles from the nearest city (Wichita); learning the value and satisfaction of hard, blue-collar work, and then learning that the rest of the country sees that work as something to be pitied; and watching her young mother’s frustration with living at the “dangerous crossroads of gender and poverty” and understanding that such a fate might be hers, too. This idea — this projection into the future — is the thread that Smarsh so gracefully weaves throughout the narrative; she addresses the hypothetical child she might or might not eventually have (an unnamed “you‘ throughout) and in doing so addresses all that the next-generation Middle Americans living in poverty will face.
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, narrated by Dion Graham
Esi Edugyan’s novel follows 11-year-old George Washington Black, aka Wash, who — after growing up enslaved on a Barbados sugar plantation — is chosen by an eccentric explorer and abolitionist to be his manservant. Together they journey throughout a thrilling world entirely new to Wash — until Wash is blamed for a murder and the duo are forced to flee. As they travel through the American East Coast, London, Morocco, and eventually the Arctic, Wash experiences new understandings of freedom, invention, and rebirth.
Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness by Alisa Roth, narrated by Tavia Gilbert
In this exposé of America’s frequent criminalization of mental illness, journalist Alisa Roth dives deep into the criminal justice system, highlighting those victimized by it — it’s estimated that half of the country’s inmates have a psychiatric disorder — and those trying to fix it through more humane and rehabilitative approaches.
On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by Deray Mckesson, narrated by Deray Mckensson
DeRay Mckesson has been a key player in civil rights activism and organizing since the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in On the Other Side of Freedom he outlines the framework for a progressive future. Mckesson writes incisively and pragmatically about oppression, resistance, and injustice, weaving in the historical moments that brought us here.
The Caregiver by Samuel Park, narrated by Cassandra Campbell
The late Samuel Park’s The Caregiver follows Mara Alencar, who takes work as an at-home caregiver to a young woman dying of stomach cancer. Mara’s new career (and status as an undocumented immigrant) comes after her mother Ana’s involvement in a Brazilian rebel group forces them to flee their home in Rio de Janeiro and settle in California. There, living with a woman facing her death, she comes to terms with her traumatic past and turbulent relationship with her mother. That Park wrote this novel while fighting stomach cancer himself makes the story even more poignant.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, narrated by Richard Armitage
The Tattooist of Auschwitz follows Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who is forced to work for over two and a half years as a tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Despite witnessing horrific acts of evil and brutality, he risks his own life to protect fellow prisoners when he can. And when he meets a young woman named Gita, he musters the strength to ensure his own survival — so that he might one day leave the camp and marry her.
TECH
With Alexa, Amazon Plans To "Democratize Voice In India." It's Still Day One.
Content Courtesy of: buzzfeednews.com
Written by: Pranav Dixit
Amazon has big ambitions for Alexa in India, where voice recognition is considered "the next big innovation." But for now, she only speaks English.
These are the people I know in India who own an Amazon Echo device: a freelance technology writer who uses Alexa to stream music; someone who runs a YouTube channel that reviews gadgets for Indians; and a self-described early adopter (who also just ordered the latest Apple Watch). They also all happen to speak English, still the only language Alexa understands in India.
It's hardly a diverse bunch. Yet Amazon says its plans for Alexa are much more ambitious.
“We want to democratize voice in India,” Puneesh Kumar, a country manager at Amazon who heads up Alexa in India, told BuzzFeed News. Indeed, many people in Amazon’s India headquarters in Bangalore, which sprawls across 13 floors of a large office complex, think plenty about this.
“Voice is the next big innovation and Alexa is at the forefront of this disruption,” Amazon said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “After the mobile phone and smartphones which ushered the touchscreen era, we believe that voice interfaces are going to be ubiquitous.” It also provides another channel for people to enter Amazon's universe: Alexa can “read you Kindle books, reorder you various Prime products from Amazon.in, [and] give you innovative voice controls of music with Amazon Music.”
Yet the reality of voice at the moment is far humbler. The typical uses for Alexa in India are still simple: playing music, asking about the weather, setting reminders, and getting news updates. And while Amazon has aggressively pushed its smart speakers since launching them in India a year ago, offering aggressive discounts and free, year-long Prime memberships, the people buying them remain tech-forward early adopters with a lot of disposable income. Entering the Alexa ecosystem is hardly mainstream in a country where most people make less than $130 a month.
Google, Amazon’s largest rival in the space, launched Google Home, its own Echo competitor in India in April after the arrival of Alexa, but Google, for years, has been aggressively tailoring its products and services for India, a large and complex market where people speak dozens of languages. It also has put Google Assistant on $20 feature phones, which means millions of Indians are growing up using voice on Google services without having ever heard of Alexa. They speak to conduct Google searches, find places on Google Maps, and pull up videos on YouTube — all on inexpensive Android phones that are ubiquitous in the country.
Sumit Sinha, a Mumbai-based banker who owns an Echo device, was gifted an Echo speaker by his brother-in-law on this birthday earlier this year. “It was cool in the beginning, but now I only use it to play a song or two every once in a while,” he said. “I definitely get a lot more value out of talking to my Android phone because it’s with me all the time, while Alexa pretty much just sits on my bedside table.”
VIDEO
Miriam Daniel, Amazon's vice president of Echo and Alexa devices, was in the country earlier this month to launch Amazon’s newest Echos ahead of India’s festival season that kicks off in October and stretches all the way till the middle of November and, like yearend in the US, is the year’s biggest shopping season in the country. “It’s early tech adopters buying it for themselves, and for their children, and their parents," Daniel said when asked about who is buying Echo devices in India right now.
For weeks, Amazon has been plastering newspaper jackets in India with ads for the Echos and offering aggressive discounts to get Indians to buy its line of smart speakers. Echo devices are prominently featured on the Amazon.in homepage. Earlier this month, it put Echo speakers and Alexa-controlled appliances like air conditioners and smart bulbs all over a large, three-story house in a plush New Delhi neighborhood furnished entirely with things bought from Amazon in a demo.
“I think voice is a stronger fit for emerging markets than it is for mature markets,” said Amazon's Kumar. “Voice helps people in markets like India do so many more things and enables them to use the internet with minimal restrictions and learning curve.”
The potential for voice assistants to take off in India is strong, if they're designed correctly. Speaking to a device to ask it for information comes more naturally to millions of Indians who have never used a keyboard, a smartphone, or the internet before. So technology companies are placing their bets on voice.
Yet smart-speaker makers have only recently begun to think about India. Amazon brought Alexa to India only a year ago, having launched in the US in 2014. The company doesn't release sales numbers, but Daniel told BuzzFeed News that Alexa so far has “hundreds of thousands” of customers in India.
And for now, Alexa in India only speaks in and understands English: a language used by a little over 10% of Indians. Meanwhile, Google supports voice search in 11 Indian languages; and Google Assistant currently supports two but will support seven more in the near future, according to a Google spokesperson.
Amazon did put in the work to make sure Alexa's accent is Indian, and she’s familiar with Indian pop culture in broad strokes. Her favorite Bollywood actor is Shahrukh Khan (“Beyond his acting, I also love how well-read, charming, and witty he is,” Alexa dished to me), her favorite sport is cricket, and her favorite song is an old Bollywood classic. Which is cute.
Developers have created over 18,000 skills — voice-controlled apps that add extra functionality to Alexa — for users in India. (There were over 100 skills of just cat facts when we last looked.) Daniel said Indians love to ask Alexa about astrology and horoscopes, and to play devotional songs.
“The diversity in India has made Alexa a lot smarter,” said Daniel. “But it’s still Day One.”
To get Alexa to more people without relying on the Echo, Amazon’s working with third-party manufacturers in India to integrate the assistant into devices like headphones and speakers. Amazon said its festival sale in India is the “biggest” ever for everything from $10 headphones to $1,000 music systems with Alexa built in. On Amazon’s Indian website, there are nearly 1,000 entries for appliances like smart plugs and light bulbs that work with Alexa devices, even if all you have is the cheapest Echo speaker (which still costs $60 in India).
Thinking about the future of Alexa hardware, Amazon also is solving for problems unique to India where millions more people have access to cheap LTE on their smartphones than have fast, reliable WiFi at home, and power connections are unreliable. Daniel said the company could build an Echo device that would let you use your phone’s hotspot for internet access and is working on “battery boots” for the Indian market — battery cases that users can put in their inexpensive Echo Dot speakers into in the event of a power failure.
“The first wave of growth for Alexa in India will come from the tech-savvy, well-heeled, English-speaking users. It’s natural for Amazon to make that their first priority,” Tarun Pathak, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, told BuzzFeed News. For now, Amazon is focused on “getting everyone in India who can afford to buy an Echo to get one. That’s not a billion people, but it’s not a tiny market either.”
Apple Is Holding Its Fall iPad Event In Brooklyn
Content Courtesy of: buzzfeednews.com
Written by: Joseph Bernstein
It’s the first time the world’s most valuable company has held a big product announcement in the Big Apple.
Apple will hold its next big product announcement in New York later this month, the company said today. It’s the first time Apple, which usually holds these events in the Bay Area, will roll out new devices in New York City. It will happen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Oct. 30.
Those devices are expected to be the new set of iPads, the tablets that debuted in 2010, a new version of the Apple Pencil and perhaps a new MacBook and Mac Mini as well.
Apple sent out multiple versions of an invitation to the event featuring different illustrations of the iconic Apple logo, in a nod to the Big Apple. Get it?
ADVERTISING
AWNewYork 2018 Highlights
Content Courtesy of: vimeo.com
The 2018 Hot List: The Year’s Best in Print, TV and Digital Content
Content Courtesy of: adweek.com
Written by: Adweek Staff
As media companies and the content they produce continue to move away from singular platforms to a smorgasbord of omnichannel offerings, Adweek’s coveted Hot List has evolved from a magazine awards franchise to publishing, digital and TV/video honors as well. This year, we’ve combined the entire Hot List into one big digital package across all categories to give you a better, more comprehensive snapshot of how interwoven the entire media landscape truly is.—Lisa Granatstein.
Check out all of this year’s honorees:
• How Adweek Media Visionary Ellen DeGeneres Built a Media Empire
• Adweek’s 2018 TV Hot List: The Year’s Biggest and Buzziest Shows, Networks and Personalities
• 2018’s Digital Hot List: The Movers and Innovators That Got Us Excited This Year
• These Print And Digital Publishers Are Redefining What It Means to Be a Media Brand in 2018
• Dean Baquet’s Newsroom Broke Some of the Year’s Biggest Stories While Reorganizing for the Digital Era
• Overseeing 11 Networks, From HGTV to ID, Kathleen Finch Knows What Female Cable Viewers Want
• Kenya Barris Reinvented the Family Comedy With Black-ish, and Now He’ll Do It Again at Netflix
CAUSES
Selma Blair opened up about her life with multiple sclerosis
Selma Blair is starring in Another Life , a new Netflix sci-fi series, but an experience getting fitted for a costume for the show led her to disclose that she has been living with Multiple Sclerosis for years.
Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease that affects the brain's ability to effectively communicate with the body by attacking the central nervous system. Its cause is yet to be discovered, but the symptoms include numbness, fatigue, involuntary movement, chronic pain, sensory loss, and a host of other difficult issues.
Blair said in her post that her symptoms have persisted for as long as 15 years, but she was not diagnosed until August of 2018.
In her Instagram post, Blair described her experience with MS as follows:
"My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken gps. But we are doing it . And I laugh and I don’t know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best."
Blair's post emphasized the kindness of the costumer for Another Life, who aided her with various aspects of getting into her outfit when her disease made it difficult to move.
She also credited the producers at Netflix for giving her a job knowing that she has MS and somewhat humorously asked that people help her if she "drop[s] things" on the street.
People Are Sharing Fake Gossip About Celebrity Breakups To Get People To Register To Vote And It's Actually Working
Content Courtesy of: buzzfeednews.com
Written by: Remy Smidt
After pop superstar Ariana Grande and SNL cast member Pete Davidson's breakup, a guy named Tim Cigelske, a 37-year-old social media director and adjunct professor at Marquette University, tweeted a link that promised gossip about why the relationship ended.
"Wow I can’t believe this is why Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson split up," Cigelske, who lives in Milwaukee, wrote.
Other people subsequently hyped Cigelske's intel in a series of quote tweets. "U HAVE to read this omg," someone else added.
However, when people clicked on the link, they were directed to the voter registration page for Vote.org instead of gossip.
The scheme has spread across Twitter in recent days, with even Elle magazine using its official account to trick people into visiting a voter registration website. The magazine tweeted the link along with fake news about Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West breaking up Thursday afternoon, which of course threw Twitter into a tizzy.
The outlet apologized for the tweet by Thursday evening, writing: "We made a bad joke. Our passion for voter registration clouded our judgement and we are sincerely sorry."
It's unclear how successful this trick has been overall.
However, BuzzFeed News spoke to people who said the Davidson-Grande bait actually did inspire their voter registration or encouraged their participation in the midterm elections.
Tony, a 29-year-old from Victorville, California, said he "laughed for a good two minutes" about the trick and registered to vote.
"I always put off registering but once I was already there I figured might as well. I’m glad I did it though," Tony told BuzzFeed News. "It’s just a shame to know that the only way to get people to pay attention is through celebrity gossip."
On Twitter, Tony wrote that it was "well played."
Tory from Lexington, Kentucky, told BuzzFeed News that he was thankful for the trick.
"I don’t live at the address of that precinct anymore, so I’m not sure what would have happened," the 27-year-old said. He tweeted about the change in his address.
"I'd have been screwed," he said, expressing gratitude for the clickbait.
Another person who clicked was Jared, a 19-year-old who lives in Chico, California. He was properly registered, he told BuzzFeed News, but the strategy reminded him to vote on Nov. 6.
The link, he said, "persuaded [him] to get back into the voting process."
"I had pre-registered to vote when I was 17, so it’s not like I wouldn’t have been able to," he said. "It just reminded me that as a young person in the US I should really embrace my power to choose in politics."
Another 20-year-old said that she would have forgotten about voting, if not for her attempt to learn more about the Davidson-Grande breakup.
"I’m grateful for the link," Azarian, a 20-year-old from New Orleans, told BuzzFeed News. "I think it’s a clever way to get people to vote since everyone is so caught up and distracted by the media, but find it hard to participate in things that matter. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the link, I would’ve forgot about voting, distracted by everyday life."
"You got me," she wrote on Twitter. "I registered."
Christine Lebiecki who, like Cigelske, works at Marquette University, also registered to vote because of the link. “I am not going to lie, I clicked on the initial link he posted and literally laughed to myself as it took me to the voter registration page,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I was his target market for his post.”
Other people, who didn't return BuzzFeed News' request for comment, also tweeted that the false promise of Davidson-Grande gossip led them to register to vote.
"I have to admit," this person tweeted. "I registered to vote through a tweet that I thought was about Ariana and Pete's break up."
As for those who responded negatively to the strategy Cigelske used, he said: "Every meme life cycle on the Internet eventually has a backlash, but the feedback I've received so far has been overwhelmingly positive."
He also made a distinction between his own tweet and the one from Elle magazine. "When Elle tweeted the same thing today it changed the dynamic," he said. "It's different when a brand tries to capitalize on a trend, as opposed to a 'random tweeter' like myself."
Lots of people also took issue with Elle magazine participating in the trend. The tweet from the magazine was called "trash nonsense" by Roxane Gay and someone else said that it wasn't "ethical or appropriate." The outlet did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment about the backlash.
A spokesperson for Vote.org said that more than 100,000 people under the age of 30 have registered to vote since Oct. 12.
Referring to the memes, the spokesperson said, "While we can’t suggest they caused all the registrations, we can say all of the cultural conversations surrounding voting certainly correlate to spikes in young voters engagement."
The Pete-Ariana tweet is not the only one using the promise of celebrity breakup gossip to encourage voter registration.
FOOD
Burger King creates 'nightmare' burger with green bun — and says it will actually give people bad dreams
Burger King is getting ready for Halloween by making a burger bun with a difference.
The "Nightmare King" will have a ghoulish green bun and is filled with grilled beef, crispy chicken, bacon, American cheese and mayonnaise.
And Burger King is actually claiming that the Halloween sandwich will induce nightmares, having tested it with 100 people over ten nights. The study revealed a 3.5 time increase in nightmares.
It's the combination of protein and cheese that leads to vivid dreams, according to Dr Jose Gabriel Medina, a somnologist and the study's lead doctor, according to an online release Wednesday. People's Rapid Eye Movement (REM) cycles were interrupted, a time when most people dream.
"Some Burger King sandwiches are the burgers of their dreams. The Nightmare King is the burger of their nightmares," the company wrote in the release.
The green-hued burger will cost $6.39 and will be available in selected restaurants from October 22 while stocks last.
The fast-food restaurant has also created a black frozen Fanta drink called "Scary Black Cherry."
It's not the first time a colored burger bun has been introduced. In 2015, McDonald's limited edition Modern China burger "horrified the internet" because of its gray bun color, while KFC launched a pink bun in the same year.
Bottle of wine sells for a record $558,000
Written by: Robert Frank
A 73-year-old bottle of French Burgundy became the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold at auction, fetching $558,000.
The bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti sold at Sotheby for more than 17 times its original estimate of $32,000.
Another bottle of the same wine and vintage went for $496,000 moments later.
Source by: Sotheby's
The 2 bottles of French Burgundy sold from the personal cellar of Robert Drouhin, patriarch of the family-run Maison Joseph Drouhin in Burgundy.
A 73-year-old bottle of French Burgundy became the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold at auction, fetching $558,000.
The bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti sold at Sotheby's for more than 17 times its original estimate of $32,000. Another bottle of the same wine and vintage went for $496,000 moments later at Saturday's auction.
The bottles shattered the previous record for the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold — a 3-liter (known as "large format") bottle of 1945 Mouton-Rothschild that sold at Sotheby's in 2007 for $310,000.
The sales — along with a bottle of whiskey that sold at Sotheby's on Saturday for $843,200 — shows that demand for the rarest and best trophy wines and spirits remains strong despite global stock market jitters and trade wars. Demand for the top vintage French wines — especially Burgundy — is largely being driven by China, so the sales also suggest that while China's economy may be slowing, China's rich are still spending.
"The new world record established in today's sale is further proof that the demand for wine and spirits of exceptional quality is at an all-time high, and that global collectors are willing to go the extra mile to acquire the rarest bottles of any kind," said Jamie Ritchie, worldwide head of Sotheby's Wine.
Romanee-Conti has become the king of collectible wines, and the 1945 is considered its most prized vintage. Romanee-Conti only produced 600 bottles in 1945, which was the last year before the producer pulled up its older, prized vines and replaced them with younger vines in 1947.
While wealthy Chinese wine buyers drove up prices of Bordeaux in the early 2000s, they quickly shifted to Burgundy, which are much more scarce. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti has led Sotheby's Wine Annual Market Report, which looks at sales and price performance, as a top producer since 2013.
Sotheby's described the 1945 vintage as "concentrated and exotic, with seemingly everlasting power — a wine at peace with itself."
Adding to the value of the bottles sold Saturday was its ownership or "provenance." They were sold from the personal cellar of Robert Drouhin, a legend in the wine world and the patriarch of the family-run Maison Joseph Drouhin in Burgundy. Drouhin originally bought the bottles directly from Romanee Conti, which made for what Sotheby's called "pristine provenance."
CULTURE
Legalizing Recreational Marijuana, Canada Begins a National Experiment
Content Courtesy of: nytimes.com
Written by: Dan Bilefsky
MONTREAL — Canada on Wednesday became the first major world economy to legalize recreational marijuana, beginning a national experiment that will alter the country’s social, cultural and economic fabric, and present the nation with its biggest public policy challenge in decades.
Across the country, as government pot retailers opened from Newfoundland to British Columbia, jubilant Canadians waited for hours in line to buy the first state-approved joints. For many, it was a seminal moment, akin to the ending of Prohibition in the United States in the 1930s.
People gathered in Toronto to watch the “bud drop” at the stroke of midnight, in celebration of the legalization on Wednesday of recreational cannabis use in Canada.
It was also an unlikely unifier, coming at a time when Canada has been buffeted by bruising trade talks with the United States and has seen its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, repeatedly ridiculed by President Trump. Canada is the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to legalize marijuana.
“I have never felt so proud to be Canadian,” said Marco Beaulieu, 29, a janitor, as he waited with friends outside a government cannabis retailer in the east end of Montreal. “Canada is once again a progressive global leader. We have gay rights, feminism, abortion rights, and now we can smoke pot without worrying police are going to arrest us.”
Canadians broadly support marijuana legalization, but amid the euphoria, there was also caution.
“Legalization of cannabis is the largest public policy shift this country has experienced in the past five decades,” said Mike Farnworth, British Columbia’s minister of public safety.
“It’s an octopus with many tentacles, and there are many unknowns,” he added. “I don’t think that when the federal government decided to legalize marijuana it thought through all of the implications.”
In a stinging editorial published on Monday, for example, the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the government’s legalization plan an “uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are squarely pitched against the health of Canadians.”
It called on the government to promise to change the law if it leads to increased marijuana use.
Under Canada’s new federal cannabis act, adults will be allowed to possess, carry and share with other adults up to 30 grams of dried cannabis, enough to roll roughly 60 regular-size joints. They will also be permitted a maximum of four homegrown marijuana plants per household in most provinces.
[Yes, Canadians can grow their own, but not in every province. No, it won’t be legal for kids to smoke. Here’s what you need to know as Canada legalizes marijuana.]
Marijuana for medical purposes has been legal in Canada since 2001, and about 330,000 Canadians, including cancer patients, are registered to receive it from licensed producers.
Pre-rolled joints, fresh or dried marijuana flowers, and cannabis oil are all permitted under the law. Cannabis edibles — like pot-infused jelly beans, peanut butter and coffee — won’t be legal for another year.
According to Canada’s national statistics office, 4.9 million Canadians used cannabis last year and consumed more than 20 grams of marijuana per person.
The first legal cannabis sale at Tweed, a retail store in St. John’s. Canada is only the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to legalize cannabis.
On Wednesday morning, the government announced that it would introduce legislation to make it easier for Canadians who had been convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana to obtain a pardon.
While the government is not offering a blanket amnesty, Ralph Goodale, the public safety minister, said at a news conference in Ottawa that as “a matter of basic fairness,” the government would seek to end the minimum waiting period of five years to apply for a pardon as well as waiving the fee of 631 Canadian dollars.
The federal government has left the country’s 13 provinces and territories to carry out the new legislation and set their own rules, creating a patchwork of regulations. Among many open questions are how the police will test drivers who may be high and how employers deal with employees who smoke before coming to work.
Bernard Le Foll, a specialist in addiction at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, a leading teaching hospital and research organization, said that although the center supported legalization, he was concerned that the public dissemination of information about risks had been insufficient.
“Cannabis is not a benign substance,” Dr. Le Foll said. “There is a clear risk of addiction, and it can produce significant mental health issues if used by the wrong kind of people.”
A so-called head shop in Toronto. When Justin Trudeau ran for prime minister three years ago, legalizing recreational marijuana was one of his campaign promises.
He added, “It took decades for the public to understand the risks of cigarettes, and the legalization of cannabis has taken place only over a few years.”
Jean-Sébastien Fallu, an associate professor of applied psychology and a specialist in addiction at Université de Montréal, said he particularly worried about the effects on young people.
“We don’t want young people to feel stigmatized, for example, if they don’t use cannabis,” Professor Fallu said.
The legalization of cannabis has led to a so-called “green rush,” with licensed cannabis growers pressing to get a foothold in what is expected to be a $5 billion industry (6.5 billion Canadian dollars) by 2020, buttressed by the expected arrival of thousands of pot tourists from the United States.
After months of soaring share prices, though, the first day of legal marijuana sales initially saw steep drops in the value of marijuana stocks. That reversed somewhat in the afternoon, leaving the largest companies’ shares down just slightly by the end of trading. Many analysts say the value of legalization was long ago priced to the shares’ value.
The federal government has left the country’s 13 provinces and territories to carry out the new legislation and set their own rules.
At the government cannabis store in Montreal — one of 12 in Quebec — a line stretched across a long city block on Wednesday morning. Some of the hundreds of people had waited since 3:30 a.m., anticipating the store’s 10 a.m. opening.
Kate Guihan, 29, a beautician, said she planned to celebrate the “historic moment” on Wednesday night with several puffs on a joint. The low cost of government pot, she added, was a big draw for her, along with the fact that legal marijuana was screened and devoid of contaminants.
In Halifax, the mood was similarly buoyant.
“We are witnessing history,” said Shawn King, the host of a countdown to legalization on a local radio station. “Marijuana prohibition is ending after 96 years. There’s going to be a generation of people that never knew it was ever banned.”
Inside a government retailer in Halifax that looked like an Apple store, shoppers browsed for products including “Ghost Train” and “Lemon Skunk.” Bongs were on display. Some shoppers bought weed, and others accessorized.
Others across Canada were ordering pot online from government stores.
As online demand soared, stocks quickly ran out, creating fears of marijuana shortages.
In New Brunswick, the government cannabis agency provided a step-by-step guide on its website on how to roll a joint.
At a news conference, Ralph Goodale, Canada’s public safety minister, said the government would introduce legislation to make it easier for Canadians convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana to obtain a pardon.
The stated rationale for legalizing cannabis was to tame an illegal multibillion-dollar trade. But from Toronto to Winnipeg to Vancouver, hundreds of illegal shops have indicated that they have no intention of shutting down, and the black market supply chain remains deeply entrenched.
In Toronto on Wednesday, revelers — some wearing T-shirts that said “Weed Won” — packed a cannabis lounge in the city’s bohemian Kensington Market, where some were smoking black market pot to the sound of reggae music.
Toronto had 92 illegal dispensaries the day before legalization, though 56 were shut down Wednesday afternoon. One had a “For Rent” sign inside its window. Others were shuttered.
In Vancouver, dozens of illegal marijuana dispensaries defied the new law by selling, among other things, outlawed edible cannabis and marijuana-infused face creams.
Some illegal shops in both cities are hoping to get licensed.
Chief Constable Adam Palmer of the Vancouver Police Department, who is also the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said this week that at a time of limited resources, policing marijuana would not suddenly become law enforcement’s primary concern.
“Fentanyl kills 11 Canadians a day,” he said, referring to the powerful synthetic opioid that is a public health scourge in some cities like Vancouver. “Marijuana does not.”
He added, “I don’t expect a big crackdown on day one.”