You’ve seen them in the movies and on TV; maybe in real life, too. Bleary-eyed and risible, they shuffle around cluttered apartments taking bong hits and tinkering with electric scales. They dole out clumps of fragrant greenery between bouts of video gaming and offer rambling treatises to clients who sporadically drop in.

Such is the caricature of the marijuana dealer in the modern popular imagination. Operating in the shadows of the black market of weed, untold numbers of small-time dealers earn their keep peddling pot, representing a group that has been alternately reviled and satirized — Pineapple Express, anyone? — since people started toking en masse decades ago.

“Business is booming,” said Brian, a 26-year-old dealer in downtown Toronto, who started selling marijuana when he was 14. He said he sells about a pound per week, which nets him several hundred dollars in profit or more.

“It’s an easy way to make money,” he said, “if you don’t smoke all your profit.”

Brian declined to share his last name for the obvious reason that his job is against the law.

At least for now.

Justin Trudeau and the Liberals, having stormed the country with a majority win in the Oct. 19 federal election, say they plan to legalize marijuana. Though the details of such a regime remain murky, activists in the weed community hailed the victory as the end of “pot prohibition.”

But what of Brian and his ilk? Could the impending legalization of marijuana be a harbinger of demise for the low-key neighbourhood weed dealer?

That’s quite possible, said Vancouver legalization activist Jodie Emery, especially if the government adopts a system like Colorado’s, where independent dispensaries are licensed to sell marijuana over the counter, and adults can grow up to five plants on their own. 5

“Prohibition makes pot very valuable. The higher the risk, the higher the reward, so as the risk disappears so too does the reward, and the ones that will win are the marketing, business experts,” Emery said.

“Many Canadians who currently make their money on marijuana being illegal are probably questioning what they’re going to do next.”

Jonathan Hlibka, 39, runs an edible cannabis business in Toronto that he hopes to expand under a legalized system. He said there’s a lot of apprehension amongst small-time weed dealers that he knows, but he believes Canada’s black market of marijuana isn’t going anywhere.

“To say that it’s going to disappear is just a fallacy,” he argued. “There’s always going to be people doing derivative products (like hash oil), growing their own stuff and selling it to their friends. That’s black market.”

Indeed, the underground sale of weed appears to be alive and well in Colorado, which legalized the sale of marijuana for recreational use in 2014. In a post-legalization study, the Marijuana Policy Group and BBC Research found 40 per cent of market demand for weed in the state came from the black market.

Organized crime is also still cashing in. In March, Colorado police busted 32 people accused of running a marijuana-trafficking ring, seizing 4,600 pounds of weed.

Jeremy Bamford, CEO of PotGuide.com in Denver, said the black market still exists in the state, but he believes it is shrinking, in large part because of convenience.

“There was sort of a…I don’t want to say cultural experience (of going to see a dealer). It was one of those things where it was kind of an adventure,” Bamford said. “But as you get older…the whole appeal of having to go to someone’s house or to meet somebody in a parking lot somewhere becomes a lot less appealing. I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of tears shed for not having to go to the black market anymore.”

In Toronto, Chris James agreed it’s time to bring the sale of weed out of the shadows. James has a dispensary called the Marijuana Information Bureau, and claims he’s been threatened at gun point by people from criminal organizations who want him to sell their marijuana to medical patients.

“That’s been the scourge of the whole industry,” said James. “I can’t wait to be able to get them out of the industry.”

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Brian, the Toronto drug dealer, bristles at the suggestion his livelihood might contribute to organized crime; most dealers have no connections to gangs. “They’re just getting high like anybody else,” Brian said.

But isn’t he concerned about the viability of his business, now that Trudeau could usher in the legalization era?

Not really, he said. He has loyal clients, and makes it easy by delivering their purchases. Besides, he added, “I have some pretty good s—.”

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