“We are right on the eve of the legalization of trees in Canada. At 12 o’clock midnight, you can smoke what you want, take hits from the bong. Canadians, make some noise!” It’s a new era for Canadians — the full legalization of marijuana across the country. It’s been legal to consume cannabis here for medical reasons since 2001. But now, anyone in Canada over the legal age can get high. And that means Canada’s booming weed business is about to get a whole lot bigger. We went to see some of the producers who are set to take advantage of this opportunity. “It’s got kind of a citrusy and pine smell both at the same time. This is one of the Kushes. It’s got more of a turpentine, maybe a little more earthy smell. This is a very popular strain for us. We call this deep purple, very fruity.” Warren Bravo was a co-founder of Green Relief, a medical marijuana company that is now well-placed to enter the recreational space. He’s aiming to increase production 20-fold over the next year and a half. And that’s nothing compared to Canada’s top marijuana producer: Tweed Inc., a brand of big-time operation, Canopy Growth. One vault here can hold about $150 million worth of cannabis. “Yeah, so in this facility, on this side that we’re touring here, we have 24 flowering rooms and then about another 24 on the other side as well. This is, at the end of the day, what all of the fuss and excitement is about, I guess. When we reached out the first time, I think, you know, the New York Stock Exchange probably, you know, rightly said, ‘No way.’ You know, we’re not having a cannabis company. And then that education process started. And if you try to break down these barriers, and demonstrate we’re a normal company creating a normal product like anyone else.” And it’s a product that’s becoming a formal field of study, fast. “We’re running the only postgraduate certificate program in cannabis in Canada.” Bill MacDonald teaches a class of 24 highly dedicated students, that includes a former police officer. “It did take some reconciliation because I was, obviously, on the other side. But it’s in society. It’s out there, now. So, if we’re going to have it and it’s going to be here, let’s control it properly.” That’s the thing — for people who were hoping for a free-for-all and one-love openness, it’s a disappointment. “Cannabis is going to be legalized in certain contexts, but it’s also going to be very heavily regulated. And my concern is that people don’t recognize the extent to which it will still, in certain contexts, be illegal. And that might bring them in conflict with the law.” “African-Canadian people, our community is very afraid to now come out and actually be a part of this market, because we’ve been criminalized for so long.” Noni Haynes is part of a group leading a discussion on new cannabis laws at a local community center. “And who is making money from the weed? Not the average person.” “I don’t know if you don’t know, we live in a capitalist society. And, you know, within capitalism, anything goes.” “That’s a very good point. I mean, now is the opportunity. If you capitalize on that, you have your business, or you grow your business, you expand your clientele. And you treat it like an actual corporation.” A few days before legalization, we came to a kind of marijuana farmer’s market in Toronto, at Planet Paradise. In the past few years, this place has been tolerated by police. But now, fines have been ramped up, and the organizers here are shutting shop, worried about a crackdown. “We’re planning on not really having anything like this till we see where the law is going to go. Because we don’t want to have a bunch of issues ourselves, right? So we figured we’d have one last hurrah, just to get people together and smoke.” We travelled to an indigenous Mohawk territory, another place where marijuana is openly sold illegally. There are over 40 unlicensed dispensaries here. Jamie Kunkel owns one of them, Smoke Signals. He’s not worried. “The amount of customers that we go through, I believe, is going to increase because of the system that they’ve set up. They’re not providing the Canadian constituency with a reasonable place to purchase this plant. I personally think they’ve set themselves up for failure.” Jamie is pointing to the fact that there are no legal brick-and-mortar dispensaries in the province of Ontario. Lawful purchases must be made online, and those do not include any of the cannabis-infused products sold here. “Milk chocolate espresso beans, milk chocolate almonds. Jeez, you know, I was really looking forward and hoping it was going to be the salsa.” Canada is only the second country in the world to legalize cannabis after Uruguay. But it’s the first major economy to run this experiment. And whatever it leads to, Canada will be leading the way.