What’s legal and what’s not in Canada’s historic new pot law

OTTAWA — Canada’s new law legalizing recreational cannabis goes into force on Wednesday. Here are five things about what’s legal and what’s not:

1. Can’t vote, can’t toke: The legal age for consuming cannabis is at least 18 or 19, depending on the province. The Justice Department says the age restrictions are in keeping with “a strict legal framework for controlling the production, distribution, sale and possession of pot.”

2. If you missed that point, the slammer awaits: The law builds in features the government says are designed to keep young people from using pot. The act creates two new criminal offences for giving or selling cannabis to a young person.

3. Mad Men stand down: The law prohibits advertising marijuana or doing anything to entice or promote its use among young people. It’s the same approach that applies to banning tobacco advertising. That means no packaging or labelling of a product to make it “appealing” to youth. It will also be against the law to sell pot through a vending machine.

4. So what is legal? If you are of legal age, you can possess, in public, 30 grams of legal cannabis, dried or its equivalent in non-dried form. It will be legal to share that amount with other adults. It will be legal to buy fresh cannabis and cannabis oil from a provincially licensed retailer, or online from a federally licensed producer.

5. Leave it at home: It will still be illegal to carry cannabis across Canada’s international borders. That includes when travelling to places where it is also legal, such as the Netherlands. As for the United States — don’t even dream about it.