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Ottawa entrepreneur Chuck Rifici dove in to the medical marijuana business with trepidation five years ago.

“When I was first looking for investors and researching the creation of Tweed, you would whisper ‘marijuana’ in a Starbucks, talking to people,” he recalls.

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“Mainstream discussion of being involved in the cannabis industry carried the fear of reputational risk.”

If the plan to grow medical marijuana in an old chocolate factory in Smiths Falls failed, Rifici figured he would be labelled as “just the pot guy.”

Those concerns now seem quaint. Tweed Inc. in Smiths Falls has expanded into the world’s largest medical marijuana company, Canopy Growth Corp. Rifici now runs a business that finances fledgling cannabis ventures, and there are plenty of them. With Canada expected to legalize recreational marijuana a year from now, the industry is exploding.

It’s also pushing into the mainstream.