Canada is less than a year away from full-on marijuana legalization and lots of entrepreneurs are already getting a contact high off the prospect of making a buck from legal pot.

Some have experience in the black market. Some come from the pharmaceutical industry. Others are horticulturalists and hippies.

And some are cops.

This past week, former Toronto police chief and one-time Conservative cabinet minister Julian Fantino was called out for helping set up a medical marijuana business, even after spending years warning that cannabis was a serious danger (“I guess we can legalize murder too,” Fantino once said of liberalizing Canada’s drug laws), locking up thousands for simple pot possession, and working in a government that implemented harsh minimum jail terms for selling the drug.

In an interview with the CBC’s As it Happens, host Carol Off asked Fantino bluntly: “As chief of police in Toronto, you were very strict about drugs. You put people in jail. There are young people who are in jail because of people like you. You don't see any contradiction between your past life as chief of police?”

Fantino didn’t see any hypocrisy. Evidently, neither do the other former cops, police chiefs, government ministers, and members of police boards who have turned to pot since Ottawa announced its plans to regulate its cultivation and sale.

Take the cutely-named PUF Ventures, a Vancouver-based company that has applied to Health Canada to obtain a license to grow medical marijuana and which plans to branch out into the recreational market, according to regulatory filings.