[custom_adv] 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. [custom_adv] 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. [custom_adv] For many, it was a seminal moment, akin to the ending of Prohibition in the United States in the 1930s. [custom_adv] 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. [custom_adv] “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. [custom_adv] We have gay rights, feminism, abortion rights, and now we can smoke pot without worrying police are going to arrest us.” [custom_adv] Canadians broadly support marijuana legalization, but amid the euphoria, there was also caution. [custom_adv] “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. [custom_adv] After months of soaring share prices, though, the first day of legal marijuana sales initially saw steep drops in the value of marijuana stocks. [custom_adv] 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. [custom_adv] 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. [custom_adv] Canada is the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to legalize marijuana.