The Current for May 11, 2021
Today on The Current:
Many Canadians use medical marijuana products, but not all of those products been studied for their safety and efficacy. We talk to Aly Benson and Rebecca Zak, who have had varying degrees of success with using medical cannabis; and James MacKillop, director at the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research at McMaster University. He's one of some 200 scientists and clinicians who have signed a letter to Health Canada urging the government to make research into medical cannabis more feasible.
Plus, we take a look inside the growing movement of naturally occurring retirement communities, or NORCs. Christine McMillan, 91, tells us about how she started the Oasis Senior Supportive Living program in Kingston, Ont. And we speak with Catherine Donnelly, director of the Health Services and Policy Research Institute at Queen's University, and Catherine Bigonnesse, a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Centre on Aging at the Université de Moncton, about how to support seniors who want to age in place.
Then, police say recent shootings in B.C., including Sunday's daylight shooting outside Vancouver airport, are believed to be related to gang violence. We talk to Kim Bolan, who has been covering crime and gang violence on the lower mainland for decades, as a reporter for the Vancouver Sun.
And Paula Shrewsbury, an entomology professor at the University of Maryland, says she can't wait for trillions of cicadas to emerge from underground for the first time in 17 years. She tells us why she wants other people to see the beauty in this unusual life cycle.