The budtender considering another line of work
Eartha Masek-Kelly works the counter at A+ Dispensary, behind a locked door in Toronto’s Kensington Market that only opens after you show a security guard an ID card.
Her profession – budtending – is more precarious now the Ontario government has publicly ordered dispensaries to close as legalization nears, leaving open the possibility that any business refusing to do so will be denied a licence when the market opens for private retailers in April. So it’s possible the owner Masek-Kelly works for could decide, at any point, that it would be best to shut down and hope to stay in the regulator’s good graces.
“It sucks,” Masek-Kelly says, “because it leaves me in super-duper limbo.”
There are also police raids in the neighbourhood – the prospect of which puts the staff at her dispensary on edge to the point that a police cruiser parked outside the Rasta Pasta restaurant across the street sends a panic through the shop.
In early September, two raids on their competitors up the street had Masek-Kelly and her colleagues certain they were next.
“Some people got really afraid one night and quit,” she says. “It’s still a scary thought.”
Masek-Kelly, a musician and student, stayed. It’s better, she believes, than the alternatives available to her.
“It was really hard for me to get a job this summer,” she says. “There’s actually just not that much. I was doing bartending and that was killing me and I wanted a day job.
“I’ve had so many creepy-a-- managers in the restaurant industry – and everyone’s ripped on coke all the time. Everyone who works (at the dispensary) is a chill person.”
If there was a raid at her shop, she’s confident her boss would guide her through the process, which she expects will end in her taking a peace bond, rather than a criminal conviction. “I’m just trying to make a living,” she says.
“I also just care about weed. I love weed. I feel like weed should be accessible. It helps me. I have been through some crazy traumatic experiences. I’ve always used weed as a way to chill out.
“It’s beautiful,” she says. “I do sometimes feel like a bigger
part of something.”