The pot lounge owner hoping to stay open and develop a brand
After legalization, Abi Roach isn’t sure her cannabis lounge will be allowed to operate as it has for more than 16 years. In 2003, she turned her head shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market into a place where patrons could vape indoors and smoke pot on the patio. She was inspired by a cannabis lounge in Vancouver and a trip to Jamaica, where the lax approach to public cannabis consumption made her think: “We need this.”
In nearly two decades running the Hotbox, Roach says she’s watched a major evolution in the cannabis supply chain – from dealers who famously populated the park near her store, to dispensaries on almost every street in Toronto. But, she said, the dispensaries and the dealers still have a sort of symbiotic relationship. When the dispensaries boomed roughly three years ago, the dealers disappeared from the park; but after Project Claudia, a series of police raids carried out on dispensaries around the city in May 2016, Roach said the dealers reappeared, with one returning to her store looking for dime bags.
Since 2014, Roach has been pushing Ontario legislators for looser public consumption regulations, through her organization, the Cannabis Friendly Business Association. And while Ontario’s new Cannabis regime will confine pot users to private residences, Roach is looking to a pending update to the Smoke Free Ontario Act, hoping it will provide an exemption for cannabis lounges.
Roach has plans. . She is developing a Hotbox brand of cannabis. She will apply for a private retail licence. And she’s opening at least one other locaexperiential tion, with a small “space” that she says will operate as a minis, lounge. But, she say a ban on lounges will just mean changging those plans.
“The lounge aspect isn’t the number one thing that pays the bills. But it is important to me on a social level,” she says. The Hotbox opperates mainly as a
retail store, though it doesn’t currently sell cannabis. The bring-your-own-pot space at the back only generates $5 per person and whatever else they spend on coffee and snacks.
“We’re ready to change our business model. We don’t want to,” she says. “Whatever they throw at me, I’ll figure it out. I’ll survive legalization. I didn’t fight for legalization to end up closing my doors.”