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“We are right on the eve of the legalization of trees
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in Canada.
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At 12 o'clock midnight, you can smoke what you want,
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take hits from the bong.
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Canadians, make some noise!”
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It's a new era for Canadians —
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the full legalization of marijuana across the country.
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It's been legal to consume cannabis here
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for medical reasons since 2001.
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But now, anyone in Canada over the legal age can get high.
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And that means Canada's booming weed business
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is about to get a whole lot bigger.
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We went to see some of the producers who
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are set to take advantage of this opportunity.
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“It's got kind of a citrusy and pine smell
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both at the same time.
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This is one of the Kushes.
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It's got more of a turpentine, maybe
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a little more earthy smell.
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This is a very popular strain for us.
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We call this deep purple, very fruity.”
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Warren Bravo was a co-founder of Green Relief,
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a medical marijuana company that
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is now well-placed to enter the recreational space.
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He's aiming to increase production 20-fold
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over the next year and a half.
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And that's nothing compared to
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Canada's top marijuana producer:
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Tweed Inc., a brand of big-time operation,
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Canopy Growth.
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One vault here can hold about $150 million
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worth of cannabis.
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“Yeah, so in this facility, on this side
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that we're touring here, we have
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24 flowering rooms and then about another 24
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on the other side as well.
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This is, at the end of the day,
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what all of the fuss and excitement is about, I guess.
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When we reached out the first time,
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I think, you know, the New York Stock Exchange
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probably, you know, rightly said, 'No way.'
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You know, we're not having a cannabis company.
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And then that education process started.
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And if you try to break down these barriers,
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and demonstrate we're a normal company
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creating a normal product like anyone else.”
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And it's a product that's becoming
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a formal field of study, fast.
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“We're running the only postgraduate certificate
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program in cannabis in Canada.”
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Bill MacDonald teaches a class of 24
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highly dedicated students, that includes
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a former police officer.
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“It did take some reconciliation
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because I was, obviously, on the other side.
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But it's in society.
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It's out there, now.
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So, if we're going to have it and it's going to be here,
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let's control it properly.”
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That's the thing — for people who
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were hoping for a free-for-all and one-love openness,
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it's a disappointment.
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“Cannabis is going to be legalized
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in certain contexts, but it's also going
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to be very heavily regulated.
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And my concern is that people don't recognize
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the extent to which it will still, in certain contexts,
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be illegal.
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And that might bring them in conflict with the law.”
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“African-Canadian people, our community is very afraid
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to now come out and actually be a part of this market,
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because we've been criminalized for so long.”
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Noni Haynes is part of a group leading
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a discussion on new cannabis laws
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at a local community center.
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“And who is making money from the weed?
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Not the average person.”
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“I don't know if you don't know,
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we live in a capitalist society.
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And, you know, within capitalism, anything goes.”
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“That's a very good point.
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I mean, now is the opportunity.
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If you capitalize on that, you have your business,
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or you grow your business, you expand your clientele.
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And you treat it like an actual corporation.”
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A few days before legalization,
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we came to a kind of marijuana farmer's market in Toronto,
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at Planet Paradise.
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In the past few years, this place
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has been tolerated by police.
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But now, fines have been ramped up,
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and the organizers here are shutting shop,
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worried about a crackdown.
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“We're planning on not really having anything like this
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till we see where the law is going to go.
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Because we don't want to have a bunch of issues ourselves,
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right?
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So we figured we'd have one last hurrah,
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just to get people together and smoke.”
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We travelled to an indigenous Mohawk territory,
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another place where marijuana is openly sold illegally.
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There are over 40 unlicensed dispensaries here.
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Jamie Kunkel owns one of them, Smoke Signals.
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He's not worried.
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“The amount of customers that we go through, I believe,
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is going to increase because of the system that they've set up.
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They're not providing the Canadian constituency
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with a reasonable place to purchase this plant.
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I personally think they've set themselves up for failure.”
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Jamie is pointing to the fact that there
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are no legal brick-and-mortar dispensaries
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in the province of Ontario.
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Lawful purchases must be made online,
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and those do not include any of the cannabis-infused
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products sold here.
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“Milk chocolate espresso beans,
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milk chocolate almonds.
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Jeez, you know, I was really looking forward
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and hoping it was going to be the salsa.”
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Canada is only the second country
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in the world to legalize cannabis after Uruguay.
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But it's the first major economy
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to run this experiment.
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And whatever it leads to,
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Canada will be leading the way.