Pot conference takes pulse of evolving industry
Canada seen as a legislative leader with a lot of questions left to answer
At the cusp of legalizing recreational marijuana in Canada, those who want in on the business should be focused on building networks of expertise to help navigate the field, according to Oregon cannabis entrepreneur Alex Rogers.
“What people know is that the regulations in Canada are very convoluted and always have been because of the transmogrifications of the medical program over the years,” said Rogers, CEO of the International Cannabis Business Conference.
Rogers is bringing an edition of his conference to Vancouver on Sunday and Monday, with sessions aimed at answering some outstanding questions, giving potbusiness types a chance to network and advocate for his organization’s vision of an industry that is “as mom-and-pop as possible.”
For the moment, Rogers said all eyes are on Canada as the first G7 country to legalize recreational cannabis, although many questions about how the new industry will work remain unanswered.
“You guys are pioneers,” said Rogers, with the amount of money that existing, licensed medicinal cannabis producers have been able to raise and with their ability to take companies public on the Canadian Stock Exchange.
“I think we’ve learned a lot from Canada, we’ve seen how it’s done, and a lot of people are going to copy (Canada),” Rogers said.
That said, people have a lot to learn about Canada’s evolving regulations. “The devil is in the details,” Rogers said, and his cannabis business conference might help fill some of those in.
Just over 1,000 people are expected for the business-to-business event, ranging from licensed medicinal producers and investors to lawyers, financiers and growers trying to navigate the path to legal, recreational weed.
The sessions at the Sheraton Wall Centre will cover topics including the ins and outs of legalization, taking companies public on capital markets, marketing, and the state of the industry in other countries.
It is the second time that Rogers has brought the conference to Vancouver — the first was in 2016 — and he said the Canadian events tend to attract more interest from financiers compared with U.S. events that are more growerbased.
However, despite having developed leadership in financing cannabis under Canada’s existing medical marijuana regime, the new federal legislation and province-by-province regulations allowing for distribution and sales of recreational pot raise considerable uncertainty, said Vancouver lawyer Robert Laurie.
Laurie, who specializes in cannabis-related law, will be a speaker on a panel devoted to discussing the transition to legal cannabis use.
“Ultimately we’re almost posed with more questions than we have answers for,” Laurie said of B.C.’s post-legal landscape.
One of the biggest questions he gets in his practice, Ad Lucem Law Corp. is how B.C.’s existing, illegal marijuana dispensaries can transition to legal retail.
B.C. has said it will shut down illegal dispensaries, but is prepared to take applications from businesses that can comply with provincial retail regulations. However, Laurie said it is a big question whether existing operations will be able to comply.
Likewise for existing, black-market growers. Federal legislation includes a licence classification for small-scale micro producers, the so-called craft cannabis sector.
“But by the time these licences roll out by the federal government, there won’t be any opportunity for smaller-scale craft players,” Laurie argues.
“Ultimately, it’s a time of real uncertainty, in all honesty.”
Another take-away from the event is that the cannabis business is “not going to be all green gold from here,” said Vancouver lawyer James Munro.
Munro, a partner in McMillan LLP’s Vancouver office in corporate finance, has specialized in advising clients on cannabis under Canada’s medicinal regulations since 2016 as part of the firm’s growing cannabis-law group.
He is appearing on a panel at the conference on raising financing through public stock markets for cannabis companies in the new environment.
“Like any industry, there will be winners and there’s going to be losers,” Munro said, and his message of caution will be for investors to recognize the difference between companies with “solid business fundamentals,” and the players that are just riding the wave of hype that surrounds the industry.
However, Munro argued that the focus of Canada’s legislation that puts product safety “first and foremost,” should give Canadian producers leverage.
“(Recreational cannabis) is a new industry and Canada, without question, has an opportunity to be known as a leader in product quality,” Munro said.
However, while there is a lot of enthusiasm surrounding the prospect of legalization, producers, distributors and retailers shouldn’t take it for granted that everyone in the public is up to speed with them on acceptance of legalization, according to education advocate Barinder Rasode.
Rasode, a former Surrey city councillor, founded a non-profit group called the National Institute for Cannabis Health Education (Niche) a year ago with the goal of bridging knowledge gaps between the cannabis industry and public.
She is speaking as part of the panel on transitioning to legal use. Her message is the industry and governments still have work to do in educating the public, including engaging with professional associations and community organizations.
Unlike states that legalized cannabis through referendums, Rasode argued that Canada hasn’t had a thorough debate on the issue and “a lot of Canadians still feel like this has been thrown in their laps.”
And if authorities don’t get that part right, Rasode said, she worries that efforts to move legalization forward will be reversed.