Canada’s cannabis industry burning out 5 years after legalization
When Abi Roach thinks about the 20 years she spent fighting for Canada to legalize cannabis, she says pot legislation is like a clenched fist.
The analogy, which Roach first heard from a former Toronto councillor, represents the tight grip on the cannabis market that legislators held for centuries. It meant Roach had to exploit a grey area of the law to run her popular cannabis consumption space HotBox, which opened in 2000, and its customers were accustomed to looking over their shoulders for cops before walking through the door.
Roach has been a stalwart in Canada’s cannabis industry as a longtime advocate for legalization and queen of an empire that eventually spanned 15 different businesses, including a magazine, a tour company and lines of pot accessories and apparel.
While regulations and attitudes have loosened since Canada legalized recreational cannabis five years ago, Roach said policy constraints and industry response mean there is still “a ton of room to go” before the industry reaches general acceptance.
“It’s the closed fist that slowly opens as we prove ourselves to society as being just a normal part of everyday life,” she said, as the fifth anniversary of cannabis legalization approaches on Oct. 17. “The world isn’t exploding, the chickens aren’t going to fall from the sky, if people are consuming cannabis.
“Five years into it, you’re really seeing that cannabis is an industry that is viable.”
The signs of that viability are everywhere. Cannabis shops dot some of the most coveted strips in Canadian real estate. Alberta- and Ontario-based giants have expanded their medical pot businesses into Europe. The domestic recreational market is valued in the billions.
Cannabis legalization has had wide-reaching
Read more on globalnews.ca
