Bullets, cameras and barbed wire safeguard legal pot
Security firms are making millions turning greenhouses into fortresses in anticipation of legalized marijuana
Quebec’s cannabis retailers have a plan to keep weed from falling into the wrong hands.
They’ll store it in steel cages at the back of each dispensary, post guards outside and refuse to let anyone under 18 years old into the building.
When the stores are closed, they’ll be protected by metal curtains, and the retailers will be under 24-hour video surveillance.
These are some of the measures outlined by the Société québécoise du cannabis as it prepares to sell legal marijuana in 20 stores across the province this fall.
The floodgates on Canada’s recreational cannabis industry will open in just a few months. With the Oct. 17 date looming, grow operations across the country are churning out cannabis by the tonne.
But given the sheer amount of weed that’ll be grown and shipped to market on a daily basis, who makes sure every last bud is accounted for?
Federally licensed growing has given rise to a lucrative side business: keeping the cash crop safe. To meet Health Canada’s security standards, growers are converting their greenhouses into fortresses.
If an unscrupulous type were to try to infiltrate a facility, they’d have to scale a barbed-wire fence, somehow bypass a series of biometric locks and motion detectors and get into a vault surrounded by 12-inch concrete walls and reinforced steel rods.
Were they to somehow slip past all these safeguards — and avoid detection from one of the dozens of cameras on site — they ’d still have to do all of this without being noticed by security guards.
“We don’t cut corners when it comes to security,” says Jordan Sinclair, a spokesperson for Canopy Growth. “Our vaults are designed to hold $150 million in cannabis.
“Even among our employees — who all have to pass background checks just to be on staff — access to the vault, the flowering rooms and other areas are super tightly controlled.”
Coe Downing says the needs of Canada’s legal cannabis market have created an opportunity for high-end security firms like his.
“For a high-value crop like cannabis, you need every inch of your business under camera surveillance,” says Downing, the head of engineering at Fedora Security. “It’s not just about seeing if Johnny went out the back door with some product.”
Fedora is based in North Carolina but opened an office in Vancouver this year to respond to the industry’s growing security demands. The company recently wrapped up a $400,000 contract to install security cameras in a British Columbia greenhouse.
Unlike the old-fashioned closed circuit cameras, Fedora uses technology that detects whether a human or a vehicle approaches the facility and alerts an operator at a command centre.
“This is what we call analytics, it’s not one security guard looking at 300 screens,” Downing says. “It’s a camera smart enough to recognize the difference between a person and a branch blowing in the wind.
“It alerts our command centre and from there, we can call the police or take the kind of action that’s required.
“It’s like having boots on the ground without having boots on the ground.”
Downing says the service costs roughly $1,000 a month. Downing says one of the real costs of regulation is the Health Canada requirement that security footage at a grow operation be stored for two years before being deleted.
“In a large enough facility, you could be spending $60,000 just in storage fees,” he says. “In my opinion, that’s a bit of overkill. I mean, if you can go an entire month without knowing you’ve been robbed you’re doing it wrong.”
Veridin Systems is a security firm that has specialized in controlled substances for the past 27 years. Two years ago, they saw an opportunity in the surge of the medical-cannabis business.
“There are no shortcuts if you want to grow legal cannabis,” says CEO Colin Doe. “That’s one of the first things people realize when we start to walk them through the security process.”
Veridin is working on a 15-acre farm in Ontario and, thus far, installing the security system has cost “well over” $1 million, according to Doe.
If business volume is any indication of his company’s expertise, Veridin has done quite well for itself.
The firm is working with 11 licensed producers and another nine companies looking to get federal approval.
Last year, Health Canada announced that it had completed over 1,000 inspections of the security apparatus, vaults and storage practices on cannabis farms across the country.
When it comes to moving the product to market, Canopy Growth has contracted the INKAS Security Group to provide armoured trucks and armed guards to protect their cash crop.
INKAS’s guards undergo liveammunition training three times per year. Last month, the company announced it would be manufacturing a fleet of armoured vans with the sole purpose of moving weed.
The six-speed Ford Transits are equipped with bulletproof glass, armoured panels, reinforced door hinges and 360-degree video surveillance.
“There’s no doubt that such a valuable commodity is going to create the need for state-of-theart protection,” says Downing. “There’s a lot of money on the table here and we’re in the business of protecting those investments.”
It’s not just about seeing if Johnny went out the back door with some product.