Tweed’s budding business hits snag with RCMP
B.C. pot products seized at airport
Tweed Marijuana Inc. became the first publicly traded medical pot company in Canada on Friday, but behind the scenes the Ontario production facility has apparently been searching for answers after a run-in with the law.
On Monday, the company was hoping to beef up its stock with a shipment of medical marijuana products that it says it acquired from B.C. growers who had previously been licensed to grow their marijuana at home.
Even though the company had received Health Canada’s approval to import such products, the Mounties, who the company said it had invited to inspect the shipment, ended up seizing it at the Kelowna International Airport.
“We felt everything was done absolutely correctly,” Tweed chairman Bruce Linton said from the company’s office in Smiths Falls, Ont. “When you call police to say, ‘Come look at this,’ you be- lieve you have everything in order.”
The case seems to highlight an ongoing confusion around the old legal regime, which allowed licensees to grow medical pot in their basements, and the new regime, which restricts production to commercial growers, such as Tweed.
As of Friday, the company — one of 12 licensed so far in Canada — had still not received an explanation for the seizure, Linton said.
Sgt. Duncan Pound, an RCMP spokesman in B.C., refused to comment on the reasons for the seizure.
“We typically do not con- firm or deny investigations unless there is an investigational or public safety need,” he said via email.
Before the April 1 switch to the new regulatory regime, individuals who previously had personal-production licenses were allowed to sell what “starting materials” they had to one of the new commercial producers.
Linton said Friday his company hadn’t originally intended to purchase other medical marijuana products.
But when the company started accepting customers early in February, demand for its products proved higher than expected, Linton said.