Ottawa entrepreneur Chuck Rifici dove in to the medical marijuana business with trepidation five years ago.
“When I was first looking for investors and researching the creation of Tweed, you would whisper ‘marijuana’ in a Starbucks, talking to people,” he recalls.
“Mainstream discussion of being involved in the cannabis industry carried the fear of reputational risk.”
If the plan to grow medical marijuana in an old chocolate factory in Smiths Falls failed, Rifici figured he would be labelled as “just the pot guy.”
Those concerns now seem quaint. Tweed Inc. in Smiths Falls has expanded into the world’s largest medical marijuana company, Canopy Growth Corp. Rifici now runs a business that finances fledgling cannabis ventures, and there are plenty of them. With Canada expected to legalize recreational marijuana a year from now, the industry is exploding.
It’s also pushing into the mainstream.
These days, Rifici doesn’t think twice about strolling into his children’s school wearing one of his cannabis leaf T-shirts. Like other executives at Canadian cannabis companies, he says public attitudes are shifting quickly.
That’s reflected in the stream of businesspeople, financiers, executives from the pharmaceutical industry and high-flyers from government and politics getting involved with cannabis-related companies.
It’s expected to be lucrative, although estimates vary wildly about the potential size of the pot market and whether it will eventually rival sales of alcohol.
Health Canada estimates that between four million and six million Canadians will use cannabis next year.
The growing number of Canadians obtaining a doctor’s certificate to legally purchase medical marijuana has helped pave the way for social acceptance of cannabis in general, says Cam Battley, executive vice-president of Aurora, an Alberta-based medical marijuana company that is expanding to supply the recreational market, too.
“The speed of social change in attitudes to medical cannabis has been remarkable,” says Battley. “Three years ago, there was still stigma associated with medical cannabis, and only a handful of doctors would prescribe it.
“I think you will find that once cannabis is legal for adult-consent use, those who are hesitant or concerned about it will find it’s not the end of the world,” says Battley, who formerly worked in the health field as a policy assistant to a federal minister. “In fact, I suspect it will turn out to be more of a normal event.
“It will become reasonably mainstream, as long as people use it responsibly. And I think we will come to see it very much in the same light as beer, wine and liquor.”
Cam Battley, executive vice-president of Aurora Cannabis. Jean Levac / Postmedia News
Marc Lustig, who founded CannaRoyalty Corp., says his family and friends in Vancouver questioned his decision to quit his job as an investment banker to found a company that invests in cannabis-related businesses for both the medical and recreational markets.
“They said, ‘You are running a very successful investment banking firm, and now you are becoming, what, like a pot-slash-dealer-slash CEO? What are you doing?’ ”
Lustig, who has graduate degrees in molecular biology and business administration from McGill, says they’re all supporters now. His dad found that medical marijuana helps his arthritis.
Some of his 40-something friends who tried cannabis vape pens were impressed.
“The last time that many of these people used cannabis was bad weed at university 20 years ago.
“We are bringing products that are just so much better; they are cleaner, there is science going into this, the effects can be managed.”
The growth will be in cannabis products that don’t require smoking, from vape pens to lotions and patches, says Lustig. And a target market will be people like himself.
“Our company isn’t doing this because we want to make the gummy bear that makes people the highest. … Ultimately, I think the biggest market will be young professionals, parents. …
“People may substitute a glass of wine for our products, which are very professional and high quality.”
That’s already happening in Colorado, says Chris Driessen, president of Organa Brands, which bills itself as the world’s largest consumer cannabis company, selling vape pens, gummy candies, drinks and other products in more than 1,200 dispensaries in the U.S.
In the posh Denver suburb where Driessen lives, parents are as likely to puff on a vape pen loaded with marijuana oil as they are to sip on a craft beer at neighbourhood barbecues, he says. “It’s just part of the fabric of society. The stigma has been removed.”
Driessen’s wife is a high school teacher. They have three children aged 3 to 7. They teach their kids that marijuana is for grownups, just like having a glass of wine, using the biggest knife in the drawer or staying up past 9 o’clock, he says.
“The sky hasn’t fallen,” he says with a laugh. “Life is pretty good in Denver, Colorado.”
Whether using cannabis will soon be as socially acceptable as quaffing a beer in this country is debatable.
Only a minority of Canadians use marijuana now. Use is concentrated among young people. (The Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey from 2015 found that 10 per cent of people over 25 reported using cannabis once in the last year, compared to 30 per cent of those aged 20 to 24 and 21 per cent of those aged 15 to 19.)
There are also pressures working against the mainstreaming of marijuana.
The recreational pot industry will be heavily regulated, including strict controls on advertising.
The landscape of Canada’s new world of legal pot isn’t clear. Key details, from where pot will be sold to what types of products will be allowed, will be spelled out later in federal regulations or decided by the provinces.
Federal politicians emphasize that the purpose of legalization is to take profits out of the hands of organized criminals, keep pot away from children and ensure Canadians are not saddled with a criminal record for possessing small amounts. They do not want to promote consumption or the “commercialization” of the industry.
And few other emerging sectors have the challenge of creating legitimacy when the product they are selling was illegal for decades.
There’s a Wild West feel to the cannabis industry. That’s partly because companies are jostling to be the next big thing. But it’s also because legal upstarts are displacing a massive network of illegal cannabis entrepreneurs who are used to being both underground and underdogs.
The transition is alarming to some marijuana activists, and illegal growers and sellers hesitant to come out of the shadows.
Decades of protest and civil disobedience helped push Canada to the verge of legal marijuana. That work was appreciated, but it’s “the old game,” says Jeremy Jacob, who co-founded the Village Dispensary in Vancouver.
It’s time for activists to become experts in bridge-building, regulatory compliance and lobbying, Jacob told a recent cannabis business conference in Toronto. A mechanical engineer by trade, Jacob is the president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries.
Yes, illegal dispensaries have formed their own trade group. So have illegal growers, who want to ensure “craft” producers such as those who have made B.C. bud famous have a place in the legal market.
The move toward the mainstream is also reflected in evolving language. Cannabis company executives don’t tend to talk about weed or pot. Some also reject the word “marijuana” as pejorative. The term cannabis doesn’t carry the stigma associated with decades of reefer madness.
And cannabis business people are about as likely to use the word “stoned” as liquor company executives are to talk about how their products make costumers drunk.
The modern marijuana landscape is littered with euphemisms like elevate, lift, relax and energize. Toking on a joint has been transformed into a “well curated smoke session,” in the description of one Canadian company, Tokyo Smoke. It’s a “cannabis and lifestyle brand” that is partnered with Aphria, a large Ontario medical marijuana producer.
The Tokyo Smoke store opening this week on Toronto’s trendy Queen Street West will sell coffee, clothes and cannabis paraphernalia that is far removed from the utilitarian rolling papers and bongs sold in head shops for decades. A stylish odour-proof bag to store your stash can be had for $80, and a designer water pipe that looks like a modern-art sculpture is $750.
No, it’s not a modern art sculpture. This is a designer water pipe is sold by Tokyo Smoke for around $750.
credit:420intel.com
