A letter from several cannabis retailers sent to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police asking for a crackdown on the country’s unregulated and grey markets has received strong backlash.
On Tuesday, BNN Bloomberg reported eight retailers, including Superette Inc., High Tide Inc. and Donnelly Group, were calling on police to shut down unregulated retail and delivery services — specifically the website Weedmaps.
People responded with outrage online, stating plans to boycott the retailers.
A good list of stores I won’t be shopping at. https://t.co/srtcyrMra8
— KirkTousaw (@KirkTousaw) September 2, 2020
Calling for the police involvement was tone deaf, Calyx + Trichomes co-founder Jennawae McLean said in a phone interview.
“We should not be calling for any police enforcement — it’s ridiculous. After a century of prohibition proved that it’s expensive, ineffective and also disproportionately targeted Black, Indigenous and differently abled people,” she said.
As a retailer who made the transition from legacy to legal, McLean says she understands what it is these retailers are calling for.
Read more: Behold, a weed store that looks like it actually sells weed
“I’ve been raided. To wish that on anyone is heartless. It’s a horrible situation to go through,” she said. “It’s a horrible 13 months of hell, uncertainty and not knowing what is going to happen next. If you’re lucky enough you’ll get a judge who understands what you’re going through, who will see your side — but the chances of that are none. And you’re financially drained at the end of it.”
Retailers should work to include people from the unregulated market instead, she says. “People are just trying to make a living. Include them — hire them.”
Calyx + Trichomes has a hiring policy that does just that by guaranteeing an interview to anyone with a cannabis-related criminal record or a history of cannabis advocacy, McLean says.
Responding to the backlash, Superette CEO Mimi Lam issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for seeming to pit legacy versus legal markets against each other.
“Superette’s stance is to grow a sustainable industry, and in doing so, one that acknowledges, embraces and supports the transition of legacy operators,” it reads.
Mugglehead reached out to several of the retailers for an interview but did not hear back. Lam declined an interview.
We see and hear the comments that the community has shared in response to this BNN article. Mimi would like to sincerely apologize to those who may have been hurt or upset by her comments. https://t.co/Nn9DVU6E9C pic.twitter.com/yqRSCDkAuP
— Superette (@superette_shop) September 2, 2020
But issuing a Twitter apology is not enough to reverse the damage done, veteran cannabis activist Jodie Emery told Mugglehead.
“They need to re-write a new letter to the RCMP explaining that the best way to eliminate the illicit providers of cannabis is to legalize them and include them,” she said. “If they want to succeed in business they need to win on their own merit and the products and services they have — not by calling on government to shut down their competition.”
McLean agrees that punishing someone for working in the unregulated market and doing what they need to do to survive is not the answer.
“Yeah, we had to go through a lot to get our licence but that’s the advantage we have over someone who is unregulated,” McLean said. “We’ve been approved and we’re selling legal cannabis — they’re not. We’re allowed to have a storefront — they’re not.”
There needs to be more recognition of how today’s industry stands on the shoulders of the legacy market, Emery explains. “These legal cannabis retailers only exist because of the lawbreakers who paved the way through civil disobedience and leadership in business. The model these stores use was created by the very people they’re lobbying against,” she said.
McLean says she hopes to see retailers putting their energy towards improving the industry rather than what she sees as whining about their competition.
“They need to be directing lobbying efforts towards lowering the excise tax and encouraging Health Canada to licence more producers so we have lower-price, better-quality, more selection, more variety cannabis,” she said. “They should be lobbying for curbside [pickup] and delivery. It’s baffling to me because there are so many better things they could be wasting their energy, effort and voice on.”
At a minimum, McLean says the eight retailers need to apologize and consider donating to Cannabis Amnesty, an organization that lobbies for expungement of cannabis-related charges to undo the some of the harms of cannabis prohibition.
Top image of Superette’s Ontario location. Submitted photo
michelle@mugglehead.com
@missmishelle

Kyara Sims
September 4, 2020 at 9:54 am
YES YES YES. VERY THIS. I work for a larger regulated retailer and the licensing process is so prohibitive to even independent operators with ample funds, let alone independent operators without funds and/or social connections. The current provincial systems are designed to decimate independent operators. Look at Ontario, for example. License are being issued so slowly that it may be up to a year and a bit until some of these guys can get their RSAs. Do you think independents can afford to pay rent for that long without income? It’s easier for them to sell their business and accompanying promise of an RSA to one of the bigger operators. The companies on this list, and the governments are who are to blame for market inaccessibility, and therefore the resulting grey market. Give your heads a big shake. Just using many more words, you just said “Please kick all the poors out of our playground”. Mimi, I’m looking at you.. you know better. What are you doing?
Fuck you
September 4, 2020 at 11:35 am
I will never buy from the legal market, those guys don’t know how to grow or cure. The black market has much better quality and lower prices. “Us” regular smokers that smoke more then 2 ounces a month will always seem out the black market through the web and if the RCMP seizes the website then we will just buy from the dark web. You fuckers will never stop us from buying black market weed. NEVER!!