Hey there fellow Canadians!
Are you sick of being stuck with a four plant limit?
Think its ridiculous that you could brew an ocean of beer at home but you can’t legally keep a few mother plants while you flower your four?
Then get your ass licensed!
I’d like this thread to become a place for general Q and A about the Cannabis Act / ACMPR and the process of getting licensed. It’s easier than most people think and so worthwhile if you rely on this for medicine or even truly enjoy the craft.
So I’m hoping some of my fellow Canadian OG’s can chime in with their experiences of getting legal, and hopefully we can encourage more of our people to get licensed and take things to the next level. I truly believe that it’s going to be up to the medical and enthusiast growers to safeguard the culture from the corporate vampires over the coming years, and I think that the more people we can get legit the more clout our community is going to have to protect and expand our legal rights to grow, breed, and share.
So please fellow Canucks, post liberally and we can get a nice batch of exciting info together and Overgrow bland corporate “legalization” culture! For so long as any Canadian remains desperately weedless enough to pay tax on corporate herb then none of us are truly high!
Let me kick things off with my story.
Cannabis saved my life, and the lives of people I love. In my home it is a medicine that makes the difference between a life worth living and constant unconquerable chronic pain. It’s not an optional thrill, it’s the Tree of Life.
Over the years I’ve put my ass on the line for this plant, for our right to enjoy it freely. While I don’t feel that “legalization” in it’s current form is anything less than a mess, I do believe it’s an important step forward nonetheless. That being said, as long as its treated in a more restrictive manner than alcohol we just aren’t done with the struggle yet.
I put off getting licensed for so long and now that I’ve filed my papers I feel like an idiot for not doing this years ago. It was much easier to apply than I thought it would be, and now all I’ve gotta do is wait for my papers to come back.
I used a consulting service to get my license, though you wouldn’t need to if your doctor is willing to sign the necessary forms. Of course, many people do not have a regular family doctor, or they may not feel comfortable asking them to write a prescription for Cannabis. That’s where consulting services can be worthwhile.
I went through these guys…
I’d seen them mentioned here on Overgrow by a couple of users and I decided to check them out. Their rates looked good enough and they offered a money back guarantee. I have no dog in this fight, I’m sure there are plenty of others offering similar services, I only picked these guys because I saw good comments here on Overgrow. I think it was a post by @legalcanada that first tipped me off, although I’m sure I saw a few others mention them as well.
The process was very simple. You contact them and set up an appointment for a skype call with a Doctor or nurse practitioner. You pay for the consultation based on the size of prescription you are requesting. I spent $200 for a 20 gram per day prescription, which will allow me to have up to 98 plants indoors and 4410 grams of dried product on hand. 
I think the cheapest option was about $150, but I’d like to do some pheno hunts and breeding and it was around double the plant numbers for an extra $50 bucks!
They send you some preliminary forms to fill out for the doctor. You tell them how much chronic back pain or anxiety or insomnia you’ve got on the forms and send them back. A few days later you have about a 5 or 10 minute Skype meeting with the doctor or nurse, you say “I’m in serious pain here”, she says “Shame about that pain, if you feel that Cannabis is effective for your pain relief I’ll write you a prescription”. A few days after that your prescription arrives in the mail. License to grow sends you an email with the Health Canada application forms, and a video guide to filling them out.
The forms are easy, and yes, they say you are authorizing them to share information with the RCMP. I get that you aren’t going to like that part, but if you read it carefully, and then worry about it a bunch and do some paranoid research you will realize it’s actually a good thing. What they are asking is basically, Hey, can we tell the cops that you are legally allowed to grow weed at your house if they think your electric bill is too high or you stink? They aren’t going to proactively send your details to the fuzz, but if the heat thinks you are growing weed they can ask Health Canada if you are licensed to. So don’t freak out about that part.
You also have to agree to a police background check, and attest that you haven’t been charged with cannabis related crimes in the last 10 years. The check is not a visit from the cops at your home, it’s a records search to see if you have a criminal record which would disqualify you from getting licensed. Other than that the forms are pretty straightforward, and the video guide is simple.
After that you send your forms off to Health Canada and you wait… and depending on who you ask… wait some more… and some more. But then…??? More waiting apparently. 
From what I’ve read it’ll take anywhere from 6 weeks to 8 months for your license to come in the mail. It seems as if the really long wait times were more common a couple years ago, and I saw a few posts on Reddit from earlier this year that were in the 6ish week range.
I’m just starting the waiting game, but hopefully this will be the last time I’m only flowering four.
-gR
