Growing hemp in Alberta is legal, but the conditions and restrictions are quite strict. (I think that if a random sample testsing of ten plants shows the THC content to be higher than a half percent, the farmer's whole crop is siezed and destroyed. (That's by memory and may be inaccurate--basically, the regulations are to ensure that THC content is not high enough to make smoking the stuff 'worthwhile'.)) The opinions about marijuana are as varied as the people who speak for one side or the other on the issue. For every report that shows THC to have beneficial, there is another to show it has harmful effects. Way back, the Canadian federal government funded the LeDain Commission which recommended decriminalization of psychotropic drugs but NOT legalization. Due to political pressures, that didn't come about in 1969/1970 when the final report was studied and debated in the House of Commons. There is an old adage I recall from the 1960s: If you smoke grass you don't know anyone who doesn't; if you don't smoke grass, you don't know anyone who does. Probably more than a little truth in that.