From bakeware to dentistry, pot expo hosts unique exhibits
Bakeware salesman George Jacobs made sure everyone who stopped by his booth at the Cannabis and Hemp Expo understood the awesome power of his cake tins for making tasty weed-infused edibles.
“We have about 300 different stock items, everything from minibite to Easter eggs to a 16-strap full loaf, which is pretty much a four-foot-by-six-foot sheet, and virtually anything in between,” Jacobs said while giving his spiel for Bundy Baking Solutions at his first pot expo, held this weekend in the Shaw Centre.
“It’s our understanding it’s going to be a $12-billion market, and since it’s legal there’s no reason for us not to be involved in it,” he said. “It would be wrong, quite frankly, for a company like ours not to be involved.”
With the federal government aiming to make cannabis legal next summer, the company started thinking earlier this year about how it could benefit.
“It was met with giggles,” Jacobs said. “But it’s something we’re definitely interested in.”
There were the exhibitors one would expect to see at a pot expo — retailers selling bongs, rolling papers and lighters — but there were some unexpected businesses renting booths.
Meanwhile, one floor below the pot expo, Shaw Centre workers had set up a room for the Ottawa Police Gala, scheduled for Saturday night.
At the pot expo, Katie Pringle of Canndora was showing off a gift box marketed to “elevated women.” The box contained a sleek black vaporizer, gold rolling papers, a rolling tool and a necklace.
In Pringle’s experience as a communications consultant on cannabis issues, women “are very interested in discretion” when it comes to cannabis use.
In the middle of the expo room was a high-walled box, open on one side where workers from the Shaw Centre were asking people to sign a waiver so they could enter the TVape lounge.
Medical licence holders were allowed to bring their own weed into the area to try one of several hand-held vaporizers on display.
Kevin O’Gorman, the content specialist for the TVape website, said a bylaw officer visited on Friday to specifically make sure tobacco wouldn’t be smoked in the lounge.
“Everyone in the lounge is a medical cannabis user,” O’Gorman said. “We have huge walls to keep things contained for the most part.”
Ottawa dentist Simi Silver had a display at the pot expo, drumming up business for her practice on Richardson Avenue in the west end and educating cannabis enthusiasts about potential health impacts to their mouths.
Dry mouth, common with cannabis use, could result in cavities because saliva protects people’s teeth, Silver said.
Silver said she wants her patients to know they can openly discuss their cannabis use with her.
“This way they know someone is not judging them,” Silver said.